


Jealous Gods

by xiaq



Series: Jealous Gods [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bondlock, Brief Mention of Suicide, Bullying, Case Fic, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nightmares, Pining, Pre-slash Bond and Q, Q is a Holmes, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Teenage!Q, Teenlock, boys being stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-01-18 20:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 71,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiaq/pseuds/xiaq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to say:</p>
<p>
  <i>If Pablo Naruda had seen your eyes he would have written twenty poems of love and one song of despair about them.<i></i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>But people aren’t supposed to say things like that. So he doesn’t.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>***<br/>Au-John is invalided home much sooner in his military career, and is working at the hospital when Sherlock is brought into the ER.</i>
  </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There is a clock.

He knows there is a clock because he can feel it, heavier than a heartbeat. Loud. Slow. An eternity between—each—solemn—tick. Too slow. Very too slow. Wrong.

 _Clock ticks mean seconds_. He thinks. _One tick. One second._ But there are too many seconds. The clock is wrong. _No,_ he realizes. _I am wrong._ For someone who is right so often it is an unpleasant shock.

Sherlock opens his eyes—A hospital then—and resists the pedestrian, but oh so compelling impulse to groan.

Hospital. Again. The machine-hum noise blurs with red and green monitor letters. The colors make noise in his head. _Like Christmas._ He thinks. And then: _No, not like Christmas. Stupid._

His heart rate is stable. _Good_. Oxygen but no ventilator. _Good_.

His attention moves in jagged leaps to the pale crook of his left elbow. He doesn’t dwell on the already existing needle tracks. _Boring._ But there are two IV lines instead of the usual one and his attention lurches up to the corresponding hanging bags.

Fluids and blood. Blood? Blood. _Not good._

The familiar weight of Morphine is making it hard for him to think.

Everything is slow and loud and bright.

Sherlock closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. It hurts. He pauses a moment to enjoy the brief clarity of thought that comes with the pain.

 _Broken rib._ He thinks. _No—Ribs?_ He breathes again _. Ribs._

He tries to catalogue the rest of his body but can’t seem to find it. He tries to remember what happened but isn’t able to manage that either. Eventually he relents again to the siren draw of medicated sleep, thinking vaguely that perhaps the taste of blood in his mouth should not be so familiar.

***

_Sherlock Holmes._

It’s been five years since John Watson allowed himself to say the name out loud. He does now, trying to parse the garbled shorthand on the patient’s chart.

He hadn’t been the one to admit him.

He hadn’t been the one to panic as the mangled mess of a man was carried into the ER. He hadn’t been the one to order a blood transfusion or suture the laughing mouth of a knife wound that hugged the curve of his sixth right rib. He hadn’t been the one to shock Sherlock out of cardiac arrest when his heart had stuttered to a tired halt under the weight of drugs and blood loss and the endless struggle of keeping it’s very, very, stupid host alive. He hadn’t been the one to treat the subsequent paddle burns on his chest. Because he hadn’t known.

John can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not. That he hadn’t known Sherlock was here, trying to die, a few hours earlier. Probably good, he thinks; good for his sanity, good for his job. Probably. But that reality makes it no less infuriating.

 _Sherlock._ He says again, just because he has an excuse now.

The name comes out sounding like a curse.

He knows he should probably call Dr. Allen, tell her he can’t be on service for this patient. Tell her they have history. But that would involve putting down Sherlock’s chart and leaving the room and not being able to watch his vitals and continue being certain that, yes, his heart is still beating and, yes, he is still alive. So John doesn’t. He’s already checked on his other patients. There’s four hold-overs from the previous week and one admitted the night before, same as Sherlock. He knows he has forty-five minutes before rounds and he knows that he should be getting his third cup of tea for the morning or catching up on paperwork or buying something that could pass as a meal from the cafeteria, but he also knows he will do none of those things.

Instead, he sits in the visitor’s chair in the corner and re-reads Sherlock’s chart for the fifth time and tries not to look at him too much or remember too much or worry about what will happen when he wakes up.

He isn’t very successful.

But it’s not the looking or the worrying that causes the problem. It’s the remembering. Because how can he not? It’s been five years, and yes, five years is a long damn time, but he’d be lying if he said that mattered. Not with Sherlock. The man is just as unforgettable as he is infuriating. John still has the same conflicting urges to hit him and hold him as the day John got on the plane in his fatigues half a decade ago thinking that he’d see Sherlock again in eleven months. Sherlock was still a child then. So was John, really.

He lets that train of thought run backwards, rewinding a riotous timeline that ends in safer recollections, less painful ones, like the day they met. Sherlock is so impossibly young in the running reel of footage in his head. It’s hard to reconcile twelve year old Sherlock with his haughty expressions and frightening eyes with the stark reality of eighteen year old Sherlock in the hospital bed in front of him.Eighteen? No. Eighteen was the estimate on his chart but that wasn’t right. He’s twenty now, nearly twenty-one. Five years since he’d last seen him. Eight since they met. More time as strangers than anything else.

John reaches out despite himself, his fingers finding a pulse in one pale wrist. He can see the numbers on the monitor, but the need to touch Sherlock overwhelms logic. He closes his eyes and counts heartbeats and loses himself to memories.

John met Sherlock for the first time at the shrink’s office; two weeks after his seventeenth birthday and three weeks after his father had killed himself. It was a Friday. Not the day he met Sherlock, the day his father died. It was a Friday and he used his 9 mm handgun. John had football practice after school and he’d forgotten his cleats and he knew coach would be pissed because it was the second time that month. So between fourth and fifth period he ran home to get them. That’s when he found his father. Friday. Handgun. Kitchen floor. John missed football practice that night.

He met Sherlock for the first time at the shrink’s office ten minutes before his first appointment. Sherlock looked about as thrilled to be there as John was. Which was not at all. John was there under duress. He thought it was pretty normal under the circumstances that his grades had dropped and his nightmares were of the screaming variety, but his mom seemed to think that he was broken and a few months of therapywould put him right again. He agreed so she’d stop crying.

The waiting room was small and white and every bit of what one would picture mentally when they hear the words “shrink’s office waiting room.” There was a bookcase and fish tank and four uncomfortable looking chairs against the far wall. And that is where he met Sherlock.

The boy was sitting in the farthest chair, one ankle hooked behind the other, arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed. If performed by anyone else John imagined the position would be called relaxed. Somehow he managed to look dangerous, which was absurd, considering that Sherlock probably weighed all of 60 pounds at that point. With his black curls and near-translucent skin he should have been a caricature of childish innocence, but there was something feral about him, something wrong.John remembered a class trip to the zoo, when he pressed sweaty palms to clouded glass and peered at jungle cats as they paced in their enclosures. He was like that, John decided. A look-but-don’t-touch sort of creature. The kind that might let you pet it one moment and then decide to eat you the next.

When John sat down, one chair separating them, Sherlock opened his eyes and for a moment everything went a bit sideways. The younger boy studied him with an expression that matched his appearance with equal savagery and, again, John’s mind was turned to sweaty palms and pacing predators.

“So what’s wrong with you then?” Sherlock's voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly soft.

“Nothing.” John answered instinctively.

“Dr. Sebring doesn’t take on trivial patients. If you’re here there’s something wrong with you.”

He spoke like an adult. He pronounced every syllable of his words with eerie precision. He watched John: unblinking, jungle-cat like, until John was unnerved enough to answer truthfully.

“My dad killed himself. I was the one that found him.”

In the past weeks John had found that most people, when confronted with this information, tended to apologize for no reason, give him what he’d come to know as the “pity look” and then usually initiate some sort of physical contact. Sherlock did none of these things. The only movement he made was to lean toward him slightly, palm resting on the chair that separated them. He had impossibly small hands, even for his size.

“How?” Sherlock said, pulling his attention back to his face.

“What?” John asked.

“How did he kill himself?” Sherlock looked annoyed, as if he wasn’t used to repeating himself.

It occurred to John then that he should probably be offended by this response, but he found it refreshing enough not to mind. “Gun.” John answered, tapping his right temple. “Nine millimeter glock.”

He was still waiting for the apologizing and the pity. It still didn’t come.

“Why?” Sherlock asked, frowning slightly.

“Why did he kill himself?” John clarified.

“Yes.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, which Sherlock seemed to find interesting.

“Wish I knew,” he answered.

Sherlock sat back in his chair, arms moving to cross themselves behind his head. “Curious,” he said, closing his eyes again.

“What about you then?” John asked, feeling he ought to get something out of this. “Why are you here?”

“Antisocial Personality Disorder.” He said it straight and even. Like he’d said it a thousand times before. Like it was fact.

John had read enough on Wikipedia’s psychology page in the prior few weeks to recognize the term.

“So you’re a sociopath then?”

If the younger boy was impressed by his knowledge he didn’t show it. “Yes.” He answered simply.

“Must be nice.”

“What?” Sherlock’s eyes opened again. He studied John in a way that made him feel like prey.

“Not feeling,” John murmured. “Sociopaths aren’t capable of empathy or emotion, right? It must be nice.”

Sherlock gave him a new look, a considering look, as if John hadimpressed him, as if he was an animal that has suddenly shown the propensity for speech.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes it is.”

***

“Dr. Watson?”

John stands in a swift, awkward movement that leaves him feeling lightheaded and somewhat embarrassed, as if he’s been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He glances from Sherlock’s still form to the face of Dr. Stamford, another third-year resident, and sighs, rubbing one palm against his forehead, unconsciously trying to scrub out eight year old memories, hidden beneath frustrating layers of skin and bone. His other hand still holds Sherlock’s chart, fingers poised guiltily at its edges, as if he’d picked it up by accident and had certainly _not_ been memorizing it a few moments before.

Stamford frowns at him, walking further into the room. He lowers his voice, dark eyes serious behind crooked glasses.

“Are you alright, John?”

Mike Stamford is a friend, or the closest he’s had to a friend since starting med school. They round together, and go out for drinks a time or two a month and occasionally sneak biscuits in the supply closet when they’re supposed to be suturing in the pit. But Mike doesn’t know about Sherlock and all that that implies and John has absolutely no intention of telling him.

“I’m fine. Just tired,” he answers, “Is Dr. Allen here?”

“Yeah, it’s time for rounds.”

“Right.”

John stands, accepting the two additional patient binders that Mike proffers him. He automatically rearranges them so Sherlock’s is on top, and then, annoyed with himself, purposely puts Sherlock’s back on the bottom.

He follows Mike into the hallway, trying to listen to the rough timbre of his colleague’s voice, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that he can no longer feel Sherlock’s pulse. He shifts the charts in his arms as Stanford presses the elevator button. He touches his thumb to his forefinger, trying to remember the feel of Sherlock’s cool skin between them. Cool. Had he been cold? Maybe he needed another blanket.

The elevator doors open and he briefly tunes in to what the other resident is saying.

“Dr. Allen wanted to start with Mr. Lawson on the fourth floor, she’s meeting us there,” Mike glances at the binders in his hands as he boards the lift, then nods toward John. “I think I gave Lawson to you.”

“Ok.”

John pauses for a moment, still thinking about cool skin and blankets and, oddly, his childhood trips to the zoo, and then realizes that Mike is staring at him, knuckles pressed to the “door-open” button. The elevator is making an annoyed buzzing noise.

“John, you coming?”

“Right, yeah.”

He steps inside with an apologetic shrug as the other doctor studies him with worried, far too intelligent, eyes.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Sorry,” John mutters, looking appropriately sheepish. “Haven’t slept in while. I was on call last night. You know how it is.”

His friend groans, briefly letting his head fall back against the mirrored wall. “That I do.”

The other doctor then proceeds to launch into a story about a harrowing week he’d had back in July when he’d subsided on nothing but ten minute naps and Jammie Dodgers for 52 hours straight, but John is only half listening. His thumb, skin dry and cracked from continual hand-sanitizer use, continues to move against the pad of his pointer finger, trying to recall the phantom weight of a pale, blue-veined wrist lying lax and pliant between them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short chapter, but next week's is nearly twice as long, so there's that. Thanks for reading!

Sherlock Holmes has woken up in a hospital bed sixteen times in the last ten years. Five of those times were intentional, but today, the sixteenth, is certainly not.

He procrastinates for exactly seven seconds, and then wrenches apart sleep-gummed eyes. The lashes at the corners remain stuck together, tacky and obnoxiously present in his peripheral vision. 

 _Rheum_ he thinks, _Greek. Substance composed of mucin discharged from the cornea. Lack of blinking during sleep cycles allows buildup. Oh. Sleep. Sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. How long?_

He remembers an obnoxiously loud clock with vague apprehension and blinks once, letting his vision clear, before seeking it out.

That’s when he sees him.

John Watson.

He’s sitting in the corner chair. Blonde hair, tanned skin. White coat. Rumpled. His head is bowed and his fingers are knotted together at his knees. Sherlock can’t see his face but he knows its John. His elbows, his thumbs, the subtle slope of his shoulder blades: they are all achingly familiar.

John.

_Five foot six and a half (He always lied and said five foot seven). Aesthetically pleasing features. Short hair (used to be longer) (it curls around his ears when it’s long). Resident. He’s a doctor now. He always wanted to be a doctor._

Sherlock closes his eyes again, quickly. He licks cracked lips and takes shallow breathes and refuses to let the vulgarity of emotion affect his physiological presence.

Five years and one hundred twenty-six days since he’d last seen him.

_No. Stop._

“Sherlock?”

He is ashamed to realize that his heartbeat has alerted John to his awareness. It’s much too high now, higher than it was moments before. He blames it on pain.

“Sherlock.” John says again, and his voice is the same. Memory-same. But more rough.

He looks because he has to. He needs to know how five years and one hundred twenty-six days has changed John’s face. He wants to touch the soft beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. He wants to catalogue every new freckle and scar and minute, subtle change of his jaw line.His eyes, though, his eyes are still just as unreasonably blue as Sherlock remembers; his mouth still infuriatingly interesting.

 _I suppose some things don’t change._ He thinks. And then: _No. Stop._

“Sherlock,” John says again, and he feels compelled to answer.

“John.”

Cracked, but cool. Not perfect, but better than expected.

“So you remember me then?”

Sherlock answers before he has the sense not to.

“Of course I remember you.”

John’s face twists. He slams Sherlock’s chart onto the chair as he stands. “Yeah? Could have fooled me.”

John stalks forward and there is something off in the cadence of his steps. Something different. Something wrong.

_Favoring his left leg. Not pain, just discomfort. Oh. Injury?_

He doesn’t have a chance to ask because, quite suddenly, John is yelling at him.

“How could you _do_ that to me, Sherlock? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in the middle of hell and then have your only contact to sanity just up and decide you’re not useful to them anymore. _Really_ , Sherlock, _useful_. As if that’s all I ever was—some sort of amusement to you. That was the most—the absolute _cruelest_ way to end a friendship with someone, you realize that right? People don’t fucking _do_ that to other people. Or at least normal people don’t. I guess _you_ do.”

John scrubs a hand over his hair, shorter now, but the gesture is still painfully memorable.

“I warned you,” Sherlock says.

“Bullshit.”

“The first day,” Sherlock continues, ignoring him. “I told you the first day what I was. I _never_ pretended to care.”

He wishes he wasn’t attached to the monitors. His face is fine. His hands are still. But his heartbeat is his tell and at the moment it’s flayed open with red pinpricks of light on a blackened screen. John hasn’t noticed though. He’s too angry. _Good. No—bad. Both?_

“I emailed you back, you know,” John says. He’s no longer shouting, but somehow that’s worse. “I used every fucking chance I got for three months to try and find you. I sent letters. I even talked to Mycroft. I called him after the fourth month and _begged_.”

The word comes out like a confession, something abhorrent he didn’t want to share but felt compelled to anyway.

Sherlock blinks and begins to recite the periodic table in his head.

_Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Berylium._

“Do you know how long it’s been?” John asks, clearly a rhetorical question, clearly meaning to continue. “Do you know how long it’s been since—“

Sherlock pauses. ( _Magnesium_ ) and interrupts him.

“Five years. One hundred and twenty-six days.”

John doesn’t say anything for several seconds.

_Aluminum. Silicon. Phosphorus. Sulfur. Chlorine. Argon. Potassium._

“You kept track?”

_Not good._

“Of course not,” _(lie)_ “simple math.”

John laughs without humor. “Right. Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to.”

John’s face changes, goes still. He’s not completely emotionless, fury still shifts at the corners of his eyes and the right edge of his bottom lip. There is sadness in the clench of his jaw. But only to Sherlock. To anyone else his expression would be blank.

It is jarringly unfamiliar, that expression. Sherlock had never seen him wear such a terrible face before and it is _too much like mine_ , he thinks, _John should never look like that_. John had always been the sort of person easily read and easily bruised. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, he carried it in his hands and thrust it at strangers and bled freely with the consequences. Sherlock wonders what taught him to guard his emotions, whether it was the army or medical school or something else—something like him.

 _It’s not your business to know anymore,_ he tells himself. _Calcium. Scandium. Titanium. Vandium._

“I called your brother about an hour ago.” John’s words are ice.

“No.”

John laughs again. Too harsh. John never laughed like that. He was good. Good didn’t make that noise.

“Yes, actually. He’s flying back tomorrow. Apparently he had to cut a business trip short. He’s not happy.”

Sherlock doesn’t speak. Can’t speak.

“So. You want to tell me what happened?” John continues.

Sherlock thought there couldn’t be anything worse than that laugh, but no. This, John’s tone now, this is worse.

“You want to tell me why you were so high you apparently didn’t find it necessary to stop someone from trying to fucking _kill_ you?”

_Yes. No. Stop. Chromium. Manganese. Iron._

John realizes Sherlock’s not going to answer, and shoves his hands into his hair again.

“Fuck. _Fuck_. I’m going home. I should have gone home hours ago. I should have known talking to you would be pointless. Goodnight.”

He stalks out of the room.

 _Night. Night?_ He finally looks at the clock. _9:48pm.Night._

He watches John leave. He closes his eyes again.

_Cobalt. Nickle. Copper. Zinc._

_(Zinc)_

John was still wearing the necklace.

That small fact makes Sherlock irrationally happy.

***

John considers going to the pub before deciding that would be a truly terrible idea. He knows destructive behavior and he knows himself and he knows that if he starts drinking tonight he probably won’t stop.

So he walks home with hunched shoulders and the weight of too much _everything_ on the back of his sagging neck. He eats leftover pasta from the weekend and tries to pay attention to a recorded episode of Dr. Who but eventually gives up. He knows he hasn’t showered in nearly two full days, but can’t force himself to find the energy. Instead, he checks his phone for messages—none—no surprise there—Angela hasn’t contacted him in nearly a week now. Yet another relationship over. He wonders if she’ll call him at all, give him the familiar string of _I never see you, I need more, I’m sorry_ or if ignoring him is supposed to be his cue. He sighs and sets the alarm and goes to sleep. Or at least he tries. Succeeds, not so much.

Because _not_ thinking about Sherlock is simply not an option.

He refuses, at first, to acknowledge the memories, but he’s exhausted, physically and mentally, and eventually he gives up. Besides, the early memories, the ones currently trying to play themselves on the backs of his eyelids, they aren’t the bad the ones. They’re funny and sort of awful in retrospect, but they don’t hurt. So he touches unconscious fingers to the chain at his throat and he lets them play.

The second time he saw Sherlock was a week after their first meeting. Same time. Same place.

He greeted the odd boy with a hesitant hello but Sherlock didn’t move from what John was beginning to recognize as his customary position: head back, eyes closed, impersonating an effigy. After a few moments waiting for a response, he realized he wasn’t going to get one.

The third week John asked for his name.

“No,” he answered without opening his eyes, and John decided maybe he shouldn’t be attempting to make friends with a sociopath anyway.

The fourth week was when things got interesting.

Upon arriving to the office, and taking his usual seat in the waiting room, John’s phone rang. It was his mother, asking about his day and his plans for the evening and letting him know she would, once again, be coming home late.

When he hung up, Sherlock was looking at him.

“Why did you lie?”

John’s surprise at Sherlock actually speaking to him overshadowed the words themselves for a moment, and John half-turned in his chair to face him, saying dumbly, “What?”

His eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Your mother, just now. You told her that your day was good. It was not. Why did you lie?”

“I wasn’t lying,” John answered sharply, “my day was fine.”

“Fine is not good. Semantics. And you’re still lying, regardless.”

“Alright, yes,” he admitted. “My day was lousy. Happy?”

Sherlock continued to watch him expectantly and John realized he was still waiting for an answer his initial question.

“I didn’t want her to worry. So I lied. Haven’t you ever done that before?”

“Lied?” Sherlock smiled and somehow the action was composed more of violence than delight. “Of course.”

John rolled his eyes. “No, I mean, haven’t you ever lied to your mum when she asked about your day, just so she wouldn’t freak out.”

His smile retreated. His lips pursed. “That seems to imply that my mother asks me about my day.”

“Doesn’t she?”

“No.” He looked almost amused by the thought.

“Oh.” John wasn’t really sure what to say to that, but was spared responding further as the other boy sat up, facing him, and asked, “What made your day lousy?”

“Nothing,” John shrugged. “It just was.”

Sherlock smiled. Too wide to be kind. “Lie,” he said.

“I’m not lying.”

“Lie,” he repeated.

John let out a noise of annoyance, which seemed to please Sherlock. “Fine,” he confessed, “I failed a test. I’m down to a low C in the class and if I don’t ace the next exam I might not pass. My mum will be furious when she finds out.”

“Truth,” he murmured, more to himself than John. “What class?”

John decided to resign himself to his questions. “English.”

“Content?”

“The test last week was Beowulf. We just started Hamlet.”

“You don’t like Shakespeare.”

It was more statement than question but he answered it anyway.

“No.”

Sherlock’s expression was almost one of disappointment. “Pity. Shakespeare is one of the few authors who isn’t completely rubbish.”

John didn’t say anything and after a moment Sherlock leaned forward, one hand on the chair that separated them, and tipped his head, looking at John much like John’s science teacher looked at amoebas under her microscope. The gesture was more than a little unsettling.

“What makes you dislike literature?” Sherlock asked.

“Nothing, really, I’ve just never been partial to it.”

“Lie,” he sighed, sounding bored.

“Would you stop _doing_ that!?”

John’s frustration appeared to amuse the other boy. “Stop and I will.”

“How do you know I’m lying?”

Sherlock gave him look that seemed to imply he was of sub-average intelligence. Actually, most of his looks seemed to imply that. “Your posture,” he muttered, “Your face. You’re not even _trying_ to hide it.”

“My favorite color is blue.” John said abruptly, just because he was annoyed and he felt like being contrary.

Sherlock grinned. “Lie.”

“I like grapefruit.”

“Lie.”

“My father was in the military.”

“True.”

John narrowed his eyes. He tried to keep his face immobile.

“My favorite color is green.”

“Truth.”

“I like to run.”

“Truth.”

“I’ve got a sister.”

Sherlock didn’t answer immediately, and then smiled as if John had done something surprising. “Lie.”

“Wrong,” he retorted happily, “I _have_ got a sister.”

“Not biological,” Sherlock said, looking smug.

That made John pause. “She’s my step sister. But I still think of her as family.”

Sherlock tipped his head the opposite way, looking oddly avian. “Lie,” he said slowly, “But you _want_ it to be true. Interesting.”

Well shit.

“How are you _doing_ that?!” John demanded.

Sherlock gestured vaguely at John’s face, looking bored again. “It’s all there,” he answered easily, as if that was an answer at all. And then he turned abruptly, letting his head fall back against the wall, and closed his eyes again.

John took that to mean the conversation had ended.

It didn’t stop him from staring at Sherlock until John was called into the office, though.


	3. Chapter 3

Mycroft Holmes had always wanted a little brother.

Two weeks before his sixth birthday his mother had asked him what gift he required for the special occasion. He was a clever child, even then, and she had expected him to answer a telescope or a chemistry set or possibly even a puppy because, yes, he was brilliant, but he was still a child. He considered the question for exactly eight seconds before responding solemnly, “a baby brother.”

He got a telescope instead.

When the question was asked him the following year, his answer hadn’t changed.

And so it went, for three more years, until William Sherlock Scott Holmes was born.

Sherlock was born the first of December. He didn’t arrive in time for Mycroft’s birthday, but the twelve year old didn’t mind. He held Sherlock constantly over the winter holidays, home for two weeks from Eton. Those first two weeks, when Mycroft held the squirming squinting infant in his hands, he decided he never needed another birthday gift again.

His satisfaction, however, was short lived.

To say Sherlock was a difficult child would be an understatement. He was brilliant, yes, but strange. Mycroft’s instructors loved him. He was not only intelligent, but also charming and well-mannered. And while his mother despaired of his red hair and endless freckles, he was still, for all intents and purposes, the perfect child. Sherlock was not. He was beautiful, certainly, but his behavior was...off-putting, so say the least. He was disrespectful those he deemed of lesser intelligence than himself; which was essentially everyone he encountered. He would refuse to eat or speak for days at a time, and he had the uncanny ability of knowing exactly what a person was thinking, especially when it was something they didn’t want to be common knowledge. His moods were volatile, he had no friends, and he hated to be touched.

Mycroft loved him anyway.

It was strange, for siblings born so far apart to be so close, especially when one of them was routinely away at school. But Mycroft was the only one whose presence Sherlock would not only resign himself to, but occasionally seek out.When Mycroft was away at school Sherlock would call him twice a week, and they would talk for exactly an hour. They would play chess from memory, eyes closed on opposite sides of the country, dictating bishops and knights as the game played out behind synchronized eyelids. Sherlock would ask Mycroft to tell him about his chemistry classes or to explain sections of microbiology articles or even, sometimes, to find his copy of Hamlet and read Rosencrantz to his Guildenstern. Mycroft had given Sherlock a leather-bound version of the play when he was six and by seven he had it completely memorized.

Sherlock became a member of Mensa at age eight. Their parents were too worried about Sherlock’s burgeoning social issues to be proud, but Mycroft quietly took the letter from his father’s desk and had it framed. He hung it in his new tiny government office beside an identical letter that he had received at age six. The tiny office was traded for a larger one three months later, and an even larger one a year after that, but the letter moved with him each time. It was first thing he hung and the first to be carefully taken down, wrapped in paper, and transported to the next location.

Two weeks after Sherlock turned ten, he stopped calling Mycroft.

Mycroft kept tabs on him, of course. He used his father’s resources and his own well-developed congeniality. He visited when he could and he watched with quiet sadness as Sherlock withdrew from the rest of the world. He watched as Sherlock picked up piano and violin and cello and mastered them with the same ease that he did everything else. He watched as Sherlock’s habits became more worrisome; as the innocence left his interests

The Christmas Mycroft had been granted membership to the Diogenesis club was the first time he caught his brother chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes. Their mother was in hysterics because Sherlock hadn’t eaten in three days and he’d nearly given himself alcohol poisoning the week before. Mycroft was twenty-four. Sherlock was twelve.

“ _What the hell do you think you’re doing_?” Mycroft had yelled and Sherlock just smiled at him, taking another drag with practiced grace before exchanging the cigarette in his hand for a bow, moving with a terrible sort of detached elegance to sit at the window with his violin.

“It’s an experiment, Mycroft,” he’d said, eyes all pupil as he grated out a scale on discordant strings. “Don’t be dramatic.”

It was then that Mycroft knew for certain Sherlock wasn’t _his_ anymore. He was no longer the baby Mycroft requested. He was his own, far too intelligent, incredibly self-destructive person, and it killed Mycroft, to realize this. He had no doubt that, eventually, it would kill Sherlock too.

It was also that holiday that Mycroft met John Watson.

Sherlock did not have friends. The only person he’d ever shown a willingness to spend time with was Mycroft for those few brief years. So when a teenage boy in a badly pressed button-down and ill-fitting shoes arrived at the Holmes’ door on New Years Eve saying Sherlock had invited him, Mycroft was somewhat thrown.He showed the boy inside where he joined the rest of the party and stood, mouth slightly agape, looking incredibly out of place. When Sherlock caught sight of John he smiled, actually _smiled_ , and caught the cuff of the boy’s sleeve, dragging him toward the library where Sherlock spent most every social event hiding. It was the first physical contact Mycroft had seen Sherlock initiate in years. Over the course of the night Mycroft was only able to speak to John for a few moments, but the conversation left him even more confused.

“How do you know Sherlock?” he’d asked. And John answered, “I met him at therapy. He comes over to my house after school almost every day. Tutors me in English.”

“Why?”

John shrugged, looking confused by the question. “Because. We’re friends.”

Mycroft had watched him retreat with a bottle of cider and two cups, bemused, because as far as he could tell, John Watson was absolutely ordinary. He was seventeen, lower middle class, polite but not overly likeable, good grades, but not particularly intelligent, attractive, but not overtly so. He had nothing to offer Sherlock.And yet, in the following week of Christmas break, John spent nearly all his time at their house.

For several years, things were good. Sherlock and John, separated when they went to university, still saw each other every weekend. When John joined the army and left for his first tour of duty mere months after graduating college, Sherlock would clear his schedule every other Thursday, spending the day with an open Skype screen on the off chance that John would be able to call him. Sherlock was patient with John in a way Mycroft couldn’t understand, and while the odd friendship baffled him, he encouraged it. John Watson, ordinary as he was, could make Sherlock Holmes smile, and _that_ was no ordinary feat at all.

The death of their parents ruined everything.

Mycroft thought it was shock, at first, that dictated Sherlock’s actions. The insomnia, the depression, the drugs. But when weeks turned to months and his brother’s downward spiral continued, he started to worry.

Mycroft tried to talk to him about it once, after two months had passed and the depression was bad enough that Mycroft was missing work, afraid to leave for fear of what he might find when he got home.

“Why don’t you call John?” he’d said.

Sherlock had stared at the cup of tea on the table in front of him, then extended one gaunt finger, and slowly pushed the china off the table. He’d watched with academic interest as Mycroft cleaned up the resulting mess, then retreated to the attic to play violin.

After that, Mycroft made no more mention of the boy, and it wasn’t until nearly six years later that John Watson once again entered his life.

***

Mycroft Holmes sits in the visitor’s chair beside his sleeping brother and wonders, not for the first time, how long his luck will last. One day, probably soon, he thinks, he will be sitting beside a coffin and not a hospital bed.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Sherlock had been better. The two years that followed his first overdose, when Mycroft had forced him to get clean, Sherlock had graduated with all sorts of accolades and job offers, but hadn’t accepted any. Mycroft hadn’t wanted to push, so he’d let him be, waking up in the morning to violin music from the attic, coming home to silence in the afternoons. And then, one day, Sherlock was gone. Mycroft had brought a tray of dinner to his room, knowing it probably wouldn’t be eaten anyway, and found the space empty. When he climbed the ladder to the attic and discovered Sherlock’s violin was missing, he knew his brother had no intention of returning anytime soon. He spent the next week using every avenue at his disposal to locate his brother, but eventually he had to turn his attention to other things. Sherlock was young, but he was also brilliant. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.

When Mycroft finally located him, six months later, he was in hospital being treated for what the doctors said was an intentional overdose. When he arrived the following day, feeling decidedly rumpled from an overnight flight, he’d found a decidedly unrumpled man already at his brother’s bedside and the visitor’s cross-armed stance seemed to imply _he_ was the elder brother and Mycroft was the stranger.

“Who are you?” Mycroft had asked, and the stranger answered, “Greg Lestrade. Scotland Yard. Who the hell are you?”

The conversation had only gotten stranger after that.

Mycroft kneads his fingers into his hair, resisting the urge to pull. After the second overdose he’d kept Sherlock under near constant watch until the day he turned 18. By then there was nothing he could do when Sherlock disappeared again. Mycroft had only seen his brother one time since; also within a hospital setting, but that instance had nothing to do with heroin.

“I see you’re still fond of lurking.”

Mycroft sighs, picking his head up from where it has been resting in his hands.

Sherlock is awake, his customary scowl, in place.

He stands, awkward after more than an hour in the same position, and moves to the foot of the bed.

“I see you’re still fond of overdosing,” Mycroft answers sharply.

“Don’t be dramatic. I’m here because someone tried to kill me, not because I tried to kill myself.”

“What happened?”

Sherlock smiles slightly, purposely. “I don’t remember.”

Mycroft sighs a second time. “Tell me please. I’d rather not waste valuable time and resources finding out for myself.”

“I made a minor miscalculation.”

“Yes. That’s what happens when you become addicted to heroin.”

“I’m not an addict.”

“Please,” he crosses his arms, the shift of starched fabric loud in the interim silence. “I may not have your particular talents but don’t pretend I’m an idiot.” He surveys his brother’s gaunt, obstinate face, then sighs a second time. “I’d offer a treatment facility again but I assume your interest hasn’t changed since last time we had this discussion.”

“You would assume correctly.”

“Fine. But Sherlock, this ends here. You nearly died. Actually, you did, for two minutes and sixteen seconds. This doesn’t happen again. If it does I’ll put you in a facility whether you give me permission or not. Is that understood?”

Mycroft can tell that Sherlock is considering responding with something flippant _I’d like to see you try_. But he doesn’t, because Sherlock knows just as well as he does that it wouldn’t be all that difficult for Mycroft to admit him against his will in any number of rehabilitation programs.

“Understood,” Sherlock says shortly.

“So.” Mycroft uncrosses his arms. “What have you been occupying yourself with the past few months? At least you’ve come back in one piece this time. That business in Bolivia last year was ridiculous.”

Sherlock ignores him.

“No? You don’t want to share what you’ve been doing? Something off my radar and somewhere hot judging by your tan. Really, Sherlock, you should invest in some sunscreen or you’ll have skin cancer by the time you’re thirty. Just imagine what a boring way to die that would be.”

Mycroft considers his brother’s lean arms, the patchwork of darkened skin and clustered freckles: the result of numerous half-healed sunburns, one blending seamlessly into the next. He’d noticed the cadence of his speech was off. Spanish inflection? It’s a good guess, considering the latest news reports.

“What was it this time?” he asks, “Evil dictator? Forgeries? I hear Mexico is lovely this time of year. Tell me, how is the drug cartel these days?”

Sherlock gifts him with a smile. Not a real one, he hasn’t seen one of those in years, but a smile nonetheless.

“Your talents are wasted in politics, Mycroft,” he says.

“Really, _wasted_? What do _you_ have to show for your intelligence, Sherlock? Needle tracks and sutures? Paddle burns? I use my gifts to _accomplish_ things. You squander yours.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow. His mask slips by a centimeter before he’s able to catch it. “In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, the FBI’s most wanted list has just been updated sans its pervious top two stars, seeing as they’re now in federal custody. You want to know who put them there? You want to know who spent two months living in absolute squalor in the nastiest part of Nueva Laredo _in order_ to put them there? The drug cartel, since you inquired so nicely, is in rather lovely shambles at the moment, thanks to me. No doubt they’ll regroup shortly but that’s still around six _billion_ dollars worth of cocaine _not_ crossing the American border this month, if you were wondering.”

“Ironic. Considering you celebrated that victory by coming home and getting _high_.”

Sherlock curls his lip, as if Mycroft being tedious. “Please, I would never touch cocaine.”

“I’m sorry. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Sherlock grins again and it is the sort of grin that makes Mycroft wonder if there’s anything left of the child his brother used to be.

“I’d rather you didn’t _feel_ anything,” Sherlock says, “It would make you so much more interesting.”

Mycroft doesn’t speak for several moments, and then sighs.

“Don’t antagonize me, please. Regardless of how impossible you are I will always love you.”

The grin fades back to blank disinterest. “You say that as if it means something to me.”

Mycroft chooses to ignore the purposely malicious statement in favor of more information. “So,” he nods to the inside of Sherlock’s elbow, pale in contrast to outsides of his arms. “Do your Scotland Yard handlers know that you abuse drugs between their assignments and ignore it? Or do you usually hide your indiscretions better than this?”

“I don’t have handlers,” Sherlock responds, placidly. “When they need me they call, apart from that, they leave me alone. We have an agreement.”

“Well, all agreements can be broken.”

Sherlock’s inflection doesn’t change. “Don’t you dare try to interfere, Mycroft. You may have the political world under your thumb, but don’t try to meddle with mine, you’ll find yourself outclassed.”

Mycroft decides not to argue that point. “Who were you working with in Mexico? Surely not the American government.”

Sherlock closes his eyes, as if Mycroft is starting to bore him. “Friend from Lestrade’s army days works for the CIA now. He’d heard about the Leeds case last year and convinced them to bring me in as a consultant. It’s actually the second thing I’ve solved for them. I was in New York six months ago. Considered sending you a post card. I think you’d like it there. Lots of cheesecake. Can I borrow your mobile?”

Mycroft laughs without humor. “Absolutely not. I have no interest in my phone records being subpoenaed again.”

Sherlock glares at him as if this is a stupid reason. “Well can you see if someone here has mine? It should have been in the pocket of my trousers when I was brought in. I may have missed an important text.” He draws out the word “text” tongue clicking on the final T.

“If I find it will you allow yourself to be released to my care?”

Sherlock’s expression darkens. “I’m not going back to that mausoleum you call a home.”

“Fine. We can stay at your flat. I’ve cleared my schedule for the next week. Just let me look after you for a few days until you’re mobile again.” He bolsters himself, lips thinning. “Please.”

“Really?” Sherlock’s mouth twitches. “A full week, Mycroft? I was under the impression the British government couldn’t function without you.”

“It can’t,” he answers easily. “But moronic siblings take precedent.”

Sherlock considers him for an agonizing moment, the full force of his brother’s attention on his face, and then makes a subtle noise of disgust; letting his head fall back against the pillows, closing his eyes again.

“Phone,” Sherlock says, extending one hand, palm up.

Mycroft decides it’s the closest he’ll get to a yes.

***

John saves Sherlock’s chart for last.

He’s procrastinated his way through three hours of backlogged paperwork, checked on his other patients twice, and even run a few labs for Stamford. Avoidance has fashioned an especially productive afternoon. But eventually he can’t ignore the time, or the fact that his excuses are becoming more and more pathetic, so he grudgingly picks up Sherlock’s binder, mentally prepares himself, and heads down the hall.

When he enters the room he is less than pleased to discover that someone has found Sherlock’s phone and returned it to him. He is even more irritated to find Sherlock sitting up, talking to someone on it. He doesn’t acknowledge John’s presence as John slips inside.

“No, you’re not listening to me,” Sherlock snaps to whoever is on the other line, “he wasn’t working _for_ them he was working _with_ them.”

He rolls his eyes at whatever response his words prompt. “Because, his father was the Barrio Azteca _Capo_ who certainly wasn’t just going to let his son—“

He pauses, becoming more and more agitated as the other person speaks.

“No, you idiot, not Santana. His _biological_ father. Why do you think he was in Juarez?”

John can hear the voice on the other line briefly, not loud enough to parse the words, but enough to tell they are frustrated.

“Yes, I’m sure, Dimmock,” he snaps, “I’m always sure. Test their blood types if you don’t believe me. Santana is O negative, his wife is B positive. Vazquez is AB negative. That’s a physical impossibility. Our _Capo_ though, he’s A negative.”

He rolls his eyes again.

“God, what do they teach in American schools these days? Yes. B positive and A negative can produce an AB negative child. Try to keep up. Besides, look at the cheekbones, they’re clearly related.”

Sherlock glances at John as he starts to edge forward, looking bored as he listens to whoever is still talking on the other line.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Vasquez was one of Carrillo’s runners but he was also working for the _Capo_ across the border. This is all on the flash drive I gave you I don’t know why you’re—No, I can’t come.”

He sighs.

“Because. I despise unnecessary air travel. Also I’m in the hospital…why am I in the hospital? I don’t see how that has any bearing on the conversation.”

John takes another step closer and he sighs a second time, louder. “Dimmock I have to call you back. Set up a video conference if you need to. It won’t be quite as affective butI can at least give you some things to go on. Yes. Fine. Tomorrow, 6am.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye, and then scowls at the phone in his hand.

“What?” Sherlock asks, not looking at John.

John clears his throat. “I need to check your sutures.”

Sherlock gestures vaguely toward his body. “Well do it then.”

“Right.”

John had never been good at guarding his emotions. Sherlock had told him so, many times, in the past. And as he carefully lifted the pattered gown he couldn’t help but remember a similar occurrence, when he’d pulled up the bottom of Sherlock’s t-shirt and been horrified at the mess of mangled skin he found beneath it.

“Just a scratch, John,” Sherlock had said, twelve years old and already having mastered the art of constant superiority. “Don’t be so dramatic. Your face looks ridiculous.”

 _It’s called fear_. John had thought, trying to push back the momentary panic. _It’s called caring. You wouldn’t understand._

He isn’t sixteen anymore though. He is no longer the worried, rather unwilling sidekick to a self-destructive prodigy. He is twenty-six. He is a doctor. And he doesn’t wear his emotions like he used to. The army had helped with that, but his intern year cemented it. People died. Often, and in messy, occasionally terrible, ways. Sometimes people killed other people. They cheated, they stole, they left their children or abandoned their friends. And he found himself caring less and less.

Sherlock’s skin is pale beneath the hospital gown, a stark contrast to his arms and face. His ribs are too prominent; painfully visible with every shallow breath he takes. John touches practiced hands around the healing incision sight, where flawless skin turns angry and red and whelped, drawn tight with even black stitching. He lays one finger in the hollow formed between two of his ribs as Sherlock inhales.

“You’re too thin.”

Sherlock makes no response.

John moves on to other things, the bruising on Sherlock’s opposite side—three broken ribs— the cut across his left cheekbone, the two fractured fingers on his right hand. It looks as if they’ve been broken before.

When he examines Sherlock’s face he does it quickly and without looking at his eyes except for a few necessary moments when checking pupil response. He avoids them because his eyes are dangerous; no one has eyes like Sherlock.

“So,” Sherlock says suddenly, oddly conversational. “I suppose congratulations are in order. You always wanted to be a doctor.”

“Yes,” John answers, moving away from the bed. He makes a few notes on the chart, recording LED numbers out of habit, eyeing Sherlock with more than a little confusion.

“You’ve just started your third year as a resident?” Sherlock asks, voice higher than normal, almost cajoling.

“Yes.”

Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change. “Impressive.”

“Yes,” John says again, beginning to frown. “Why are you being like this?”

Sherlock smiles slightly, innocently. “Just making friendly conversation.”

“We’re not friends.”

Sherlock has the audacity to feign hurt. “We used to be.”

John’s fingers tighten on the patient binder. “Notice the use of past tense.”

“Would it help if I apologized?”

“No. Because you wouldn’t mean it. What do you want, Sherlock?”

The other man’s voice drops back into his normal range and he gives John the Sherlock-equivalent of a scowl- a slight narrowing of his lips, the touch of annoyance evident in his right eyebrow.

“A laptop. By 6am tomorrow morning. I doubt Mycroft will bring me mine without significant coercion.”

“And what, you think _I’ll_ be more interested in helping you? I thought you were smart.” Perhaps his sarcasm is a bit too thick, but he reminds himself that he’s certainly earned it, and Dr. Allen is hardly here to disapprove of his bedside manner.

“I have information,” Sherlock says finally, as if John has forced him to do something unsavory.

“You always have information,” John retorts, turning toward the door, “But I couldn’t care less about who’s sleeping with who and which nurse has been sneaking needles out of the supply closet. Don’t bother.”

“What about Dr. Stamford. Do you care about him?”

John loathes the superiority in Sherlock’s tone, but it doesn’t stop him from turning back around.

“Fine.” John rubs his free hand over his face, gesturing toward Sherlock with the chart in the other. “Go.”

“Your Dr. Stamford is broke. Badly so. He lost his flat a week or two ago but he’s too proud to tell anyone. He’s been living here in the hospital. No one’s noticed yet because residents spend all their time here anyway. But eventually someone will and he’ll be in even more trouble. I assume you’ll want to prevent that from happening.”

“Bugger,” John says, more to himself than Sherlock, “Why didn’t he tell anyone?”

“Pride,” Sherlock says, because Sherlock has never understood the purpose of hypothetical questions.

“Ok.” The weight of exhaustion has suddenly doubled. “That’s worth a laptop. I’ll bring it tomorrow, should have it to you by 5am or so.”

Sherlock nods once, as if this had been expected. There is no “thank you,” but John hadn’t been expecting one. He pauses with his hand on the door, and then turns to face Sherlock again.

“How did you know?”

“Are you doubting me?”

“No. I know better than that. I just always liked hearing how you’d figure things out.”

There’s a complicated expression that crosses Sherlock’s face, but it’s gone before John can parse it. Sherlock purses his lips.

“His clothes haven’t been washed properly. They’re too stiff, so either he has an aversion to using fabric softener or he’s washing his clothes by hand. That and he reeks of the hospital’s bulk brand soap. Harsh. Chemical. The only way a person could smell that strongly of it is if they’d been cleaning both themselves and their clothes with it. It’s beginning to damage his hair, which puts my estimate at a week and a half. Also I offered him my breakfast this morning when he checked my sutures pre-rounds. He stunk nearly as much of guilt as he did of soap, but he ate every last crumb of those tragic flour contrivances masquerading as scones. As a result, he was embarrassed during rounds. That’s why he tripped over himself so much. You noticed.”

He had.

John sighs, recalling several instances in the past month when he’d asked if Stamford wanted to grab something to eat or get a beer and the other man had turned him down, giving feeble excuses. He’d stopped buying snacks from the vending machine and only drank the free coffee from the break room. John should have noticed something was wrong.

“Anything else?” John asks.

Sherlock’s upper lip quirks. “No. The food cemented it for me. Only someone truly desperate would have eaten those.”

John laughs before he can stop himself, and then fists his hands at the automatic rush of horror that follows.

_No. Don’t._

He turns abruptly, picking up Sherlock’s chart again, and leaves without saying goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what the medical school process is like, so I'm assuming it's similar to that of the US. If not, feel free to correct me! Hope you enjoyed a little taste of Mycroft. :)


	4. Chapter 4

The first time John had seen Sherlock hurt was six weeks after he met him, the sixth week of therapy. The week before was when he learned his name.

The fifth week, Johndidn’t bother saying hello as he sat down. He knew by that point that if Sherlock was interested in talking to him, he would. If not, he wouldn’t.

He dropped his backpack, pulled out Hamlet, and proceeded to glare at the pages for several minutes as if they had personally affronted him.

“You like maths.”

John looked at Sherlock over the spine of his book, and then set Hamlet down with a sigh. It wasn’t as if I was making much progress anyway.

“Yes.”

He didn’t appear inclined to say anything else and for some reason the idea of that being the extent of their interaction for the day seemed unforgivable to John.

“How did you know?” John asked.

“Because.” Sherlock gestured to John’s body as a whole,words slow. “Everything about you is structured. Regimented. You arrive at the same time every day. You backpack is far too orderly for an average teenage boy. Your mobile phone is always in your right pocket, never your left.” Sherlock's words speed up, running into each other. “You sit the same, recycle three main expressions and make a conscious effort not to fidget. You like order. Math is order. It’s predictable. You learn the rules. You follow them. Two and two will always be four. It is constant. You like it because it is something you can control.” He sat back, looking nearly surprised with himself, and then added, almost as an afterthought, “It’s boring.”

“So, by extension, _I’m_ boring?” John asked. He decided not to comment on the rest of it.

“I didn’t say that,” Sherlock responded. “If you were boring I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

Somehow he managed to make the complementary sentence sound like an insult.

John resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“What about you then?” he asked instead.

“Me?”

“I’m good at maths. What are you good at?”

“I’m good at everything.” There was none of the expected sentiment to his tone: no bragging, no pride. He said the words like they were fact.

“What level are you at in school?” John asked.

“Sixth form.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”His expression said, _“obviously.”_

“How old are you?”

“Twelve.

John let out a low whistle. “I guess you really are good at everything then.”

Again, the _obviously_ look.

John remembered the previous week with a smile.

“I have a coin collection,” he said offhandedly and Sherlock’s lips quirked just slightly, the hint of a smile, as he answered. “Lie.”

He doesn’t know why he did it then, but he obeyed the sudden compulsion to extend his hand and say, “My name is John, John Watson,” waiting with far too much optimism, hoping he’d return the gesture.

The other boy studied him for a moment.

His hand touched John’s, briefly, a whisper of skin, before he withdrew it again.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said.

The sixth week John greeted Sherlock with a statement.

“I hate orange juice.”

“Lie,” he answered without opening his eyes, and John sat down with a sigh.

“I listen to The Clash when I study,” he continued

Sherlock laughed, a real laugh, the first John had heard, and sat up to look at him. “Truth. Perhaps that’s the reason you’re failing English.”

John made a face at his. “Well what do _you_ listen to while studying?”

Sherlock laughed again, louder this time, but less real. “I don’t study.”

“At all?” he asked.

Sherlock gave him a look that clearly stated such activities were far too pedestrian to concern him.

“Well alright then.”

John ducked to dig Hamlet out of his bag and realized from that vantage point that Sherlock was barefoot.

“Where are your shoes?” 

“I don’t know,” Sherlock responded, completely unconcerned.

John’s attention returned to his pale toes, blacked from walking on asphalt, reddened beneath the dirt.

“How can you not know?”

Sherlock’s voice turned sharp. “I’d think that’s relatively self-explanatory. But I can guess if you’d like.”

John slid from his chair into an awkward crouch, reaching for one of Sherlock’s ankles, but when Sherlock realized his intentions, he jerked both legs to his chest, out of his reach, looking nearly frightened.

“What are you doing?”

“I think you’re bleeding, just—“ John beckoned with one hand, “let me see, please.”

Sherlock slowly lowered the foot John had been reaching for and he took a moment to look it over before motioning for the second. They were a mess. Sherlock’s blacked toes were cut, the arch and balls of his feet peppered with bits of ingrained rock.

“What the hell were you doing? Running through gravel?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered.

John hadn’t been serious, but the solemn answer drew his attention back to Sherlock’s face.

“What? _Why_?”

“Because it was better than the alternative.”

John considered the mangled foot in his hand, fingers easily circled around his ankle, and frowned.

“What was the alternative?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Being caught.”

“Someone was chasing you?”

The _obviously_ look.

“So you lost your shoes while running away from someone who wanted to hurt you?”

“No.” Sherlock kicked away John's hands, curling his knees back to his chest. “They took my shoes thinking it would _prevent_ me from running. Oversight on their part, really.”

As usual there was no hint of emotion in his voice. No self-consciousness, no pity. Just the transference of information.

“They?” John repeated.

For a moment it looked as if Sherlock was going to deliver some cutting remark about repetition and John’s being tedious, but after studying John for another moment, Sherlock's face fell.

“People don’t like me much.” He said shortly, as if that explained everything. And then he tipped his head back, closing his eyes.

 _End of discussion_ , the posture said.

John let it go.

But he found he couldn’t. Not really. He sat on the curb outside the door after his appointment, but couldn’t force himself to leave. He pulled out Hamlet and resigned himself to waiting. Half an hour later Sherlock exited the office building, head ducked, hands in pockets, and John scrambled to his feet, unsure of how to proceed.

“Hey!” Eloquent. A perfect beginning.

Sherlock turned to face him, and then took hesitant steps forward, as if unsure John had actually called to him.

“Yes?”

“Let me give you my spare trainers,” John said, jerking a thumb toward his backpack. “Your feet are a mess.”

“I’m fine.”

“Lie,” John said shortly, doing his best to mimic Sherlock’s voice.

The elicited a brief smile, and after a moment's deliberation Sherlock moved a pace closer. “I’ll get blood on them.”

“Nothing they haven’t seen before,” John said, slinging the bag off one shoulder so he could rifle through it. “Here. They’re a bit old, but.”

Sherlock took the shoes, looking rather lost, and sat down to put them on. As John had suspected, they were laughably large, but the expression on Sherlock’s face was strangely content when he stood again.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said carefully.

They started walking.

“Where you headed?” John asked.

“Library.” 

“Thought you didn’t study.”

“I don’t.”

“So why the library?”

“It’s preferable to the alternative.”

John frowned. “The alternative being your house?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask why the library is preferable to your house?

“Yes.”

It was silent for several seconds and John had to laugh. “Why is the library preferable to your house?”

“Because. Everything is too quite or too loud there. My father is rarely home and my mother dislikes me.” No emotion. No inflection. Just words strung together into sentences.

“Your mother doesn’t like you?” John repeats.

“Not at all.”

“Why?”

Sherlock pursued his lips, but remained otherwise expressionless. “Because. She is afraid of me.”

It took a moment for him to process that. “What about your dad?”

“I think he scares her too.”

John laughed, despite the conversation being anything but funny. “I mean what does your father think of you?

Sherlock frowned, as if he hadn’t considered the question before. “ I doubt he has a strong opinion one way or the other. He hasn’t spent enough time with me to form one. No doubt he prefers my elder brother though.”

“Your brother?” John prompted.

“Mycroft. Twelve years older than me. He’s in politics.”

“So is he like you then, really smart, I mean?”

“Very like me,” Sherlock agreed. “But the good parts only.”

“What do you mean?

“Sociopath,” Sherlock reminded him, finger to his right temple.

“He’s not, I take it?”

“No.”

“He sounds nice.”

Sherlock gave him a look John couldn’t decipher. “Not really. ”

“If he’s in politics, what do you want to do? When you grow up?”

“I want to be a shrink.”

Sherlock said it so solemnly that it took John a moment to recognize the joke and burst out laughing.

“Lie,” John said again, a suitable impression of the other boy’s cold inflection.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, stopping in front of the library.

“Sometimes I sing opera while I cook,” John said, continuing to walk.

“Truth,” Sherlock yelled to him. “Are you going to keep doing this? It’s getting tedious.”

John didn’t answer, just waved and watched Sherlock climb the stone library steps over his shoulder. It was hard to tell, but he thought the other boy might be smiling.

***

“John?”

He lurches painfully from memory to present, opening his eyes, squinting against the light that floods the on-call room.

“Sorry, sorry.” Stamford shuffles inside. “It’s 4:30. You told me to wake you when I came in.”

“Right.”

John digs the heels of his palms into swollen eyes, knowing he’s got nowhere near a full night’s sleep.When he opens them again, Stamford is looking decidedly embarrassed.

He hands over John’s keys without meeting his eyes. “Thanks for letting me crash at your place last night. I promise, it’ll only be till I can find another flat…”

John lets the lie go. “Did you bring the laptop?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Stamford swings his backpack off one shoulder, extracting from it a charge cord and a macbook. “This it?”

“Mm.”

The other resident takes John’s grunt as a sign of affirmation.

“Alright, thanks again. I’ll see you at rounds.”

“Yeah.”

The door clicks softly with his exit, and John stands, tucking the laptop and its cord under one elbow, the other hand trying to work some semblance of order back into his hair.

He gives it up as a lost cause and decides to deliver his promise before he’s paged elsewhere with an emergency.

The door opens again and he turns, expecting Stamford’s forgotten to tell him something, but instead finds himself face to face with Mycroft Holmes.

The man looks impossibly put together: a perfectly tailored suit, jacket folded neatly over one arm, stubble-less, and far too alert-looking for four AM.

“John,” Mycroft says, a subtle hint of surprise coloring his tone, as if it was some sort of happy accident they’d run into each other.

“Mycroft,” John answers, conscious of his breathing.

 _Don’t punch him_. He reminds himself. _The man may be an insufferable ass, but he’s also frighteningly powerful._

Sherlock’s brother studies him for a moment, taking in the rumpled scrubs and darkened eyes.

“I know you’re probably less than pleased with me,” he starts.

“Understatement,” John mutters.

Mycroft inclines his head. “But still. You have no idea how thankful I am you called. My brother is…”

“Stupid? Reckless? Absolutely infuriating?”

He laughs politely. “All true, but I was going to say that he is upsettingly shortsighted for a genius. I thought the situation with heroin was in hand. Clearly I was wrong.”

John kneads the back of his neck with his free hand. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Mycroft shrugs. “I threatened. He said he would stop.”

“And you believe him?”

“No.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” John repeats.

Mycroft gives him a somewhat stern look. “Wait. Keep a closer eye on him. Eventually I’ll be compelled to intervene more forcefully.”

John lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “And _now_ isn’t the time? He nearly died, Mycroft. I assume you’ve seen his chart.”

“I have.”

“So, what, is death not a pressing enough excuse for intervention?”

The stern look intensifies. “I have my reasons. I don’t have to share them with you.”

“That’s been _abundantly_ clear, thanks.”

Mycroft sighs. “You seem awfully invested in his wellbeing for someone who hasn’t seen him in five years.”

“Five years one hundred and twenty seven days,” he says automatically, recalling Sherlock’s quick math. Then he realizes what he’s said and flinches.

Mycroft is looking rather torn. “I _am_ sorry, John,” he says,

“What?”

“I couldn’t contact you. If it had been my choice, I would have. You were good for him. I recognized that, even if he didn’t.”

John realizes his hands have clenched into fists. He takes a moment to slowly uncurl his fingers.

“I’m not going to forgive you,” he says. There is no anger in the words, just reluctant truth.

“I know,” for a moment, Mycroft looks just as tired as John feels. “But if you would,” he pauses, shifting to lean on the umbrella in his hand, “Just…be gentle with him. You were the only person apart from myself that he ever willingly spent time with. I was an eventual disappointment. But you, John…”

His tone implies the impossible.

“I’ll treat him with the same courtesy I treat all my other patients.” John says sharply. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“I assume the laptop is for Sherlock,” Mycroft continues, not moving.

John grinds his teeth, but stops all the same. “Yes. Problem?”

“No. I’m just surprised he was able to earn a favor from you so quickly.”

“Sherlock gets what he wants,” he answers.

“Yes,” Mycroft agrees.

John considers walking away then, is sorely tempted to, but doesn’t. He dampens his lips with a quick slide of his tongue and tries to soften the sharp line of his shoulders. If he wants information he’s going to have to give up a bit of ego in the process. “I overheard an interesting phone conversation yesterday,” he starts, hesitant, and Mycroft smiles.

“Yes, Sherlock’s taken up a rather atypical career choice since you last saw his.”

“It sounded…”he closes his eyes for a moment, too slow to be a blink, and sighs. “It sounded like he was talking about—those men, who’ve been all over the news, the ones arrested in the US.”

“Yes,” Mycroft agrees, infuriatingly placid. “I don’t know the details, of course, but Sherlock was somewhat involved in the proceedings at the border last week. I’m sure you noticed the terrible state of his skin. He never did have any interest in bothering with sunscreen. But,” he shakes his head, as if he’d been momentarily sidetracked, “You know my brother has rather unique talents. He uses them as he sees fit, and I am under the impression that he is very good at what he does. Whatever that may be.”

John pushes his palm against his forehead, closing his eyes again.

“So you’re telling me he’s some sort of private detective? That catches drug lords?”

“No,” Mycroft hedges, “Not as such.”

“But close?”

“Well,” Mycroft admits with a sigh that matches John’s. “He prefers the term ‘consulting detective.’ I suppose if anyone was going to invent an occupation, it would be Sherlock. You understand.”

“Ah,” John says, not understanding at all. “I see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more of Mycroft. Because he's my favorite. Don't fret, next week is back to John and Sherlock. Chapter 5 also involves quite a bit of deduction. Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

_Five years, one hundred twenty-seven days._

Is it bad that he’s still counting? Sherlock thinks it probably is.

John brings with him memories of scarred knuckles and long summer days cushioned by companionable silence and the hum of low conversation. His haggard face, clearly lacking sleep, is far more interesting than the laptop he proffers Sherlock. There’s a hardness about John’s features now. It’s like the difference between water and ice, he thinks: _Identical in chemical makeup: Two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to an oxygen molecule. But one still so much more inhospitable than the other._

He realizes that John hasn’t left. He’s still standing there, purposeless, arms crossed, looking at him with sharp edges and ice and it’s all wrong.

Sherlock powers on the laptop as an excuse to look away.

“I’m babysitting you today,” John says. The words, issued from frozen lips, are stilted.

“Pardon?”

“My attending, Dr. Allen. She called me last night. Apparently your brother is worried you’ll overwork yourself. She’s assigned me to look after you today while you conduct whatever your urgent business is.”

“No.”

John laughs, and that is all wrong too.

“You don’t get a say, actually. Believe me, I tried to get out of it, but apparently when Mycroft Holmes makes a request, a person is expected to do everything in their power to grant it.”

 _Mycroft._ He thinks. _Of course._

He studies John’s posture. It is nearly violent despite the exhausted curve of his spine. John hates him now, Sherlock realizes, really and truly hates him.

 _Warranted._ He thinks.

It should have pleased him, he knew. It was the exact response that final email had been engineered to produce. But any smug pride is swallowed by a growing wash of numb horror. His presence was a physical discomfort for John. That was easy enough to see. And while usually he had no qualms about making other people uncomfortable, Sherlock had the same unexplainable aversion to causing John pain that he’d had five years, one hundred and twenty-seven days ago when John had walked onto that plane, head tipped over his right shoulder, waving goodbye, and Sherlock hadn’t cried because he knew it would have upset him.

Granted, Sherlock didn’t cry ever, as a rule, so John probably hadn’t realized the sacrifice. 

 _Sentiment._ He reminds herself. And that, right there, the horrible, mad desire to _make John happy_ , that was why the email had been sent. Had to be sent. He’d never intended to see, much less deal, with the subsequent fallout, but he would now; with silence and indifference and well-practiced, less than subtle cruelty. That way, when Sherlock left in three days— _three?_ —He considered the pull of stitches as he breathed, then read the upside-down chart in John’s hand. _Three. Two if he was lucky—_ That way, when he left John would make no attempts to find him again and he could return to a life blissfully free of John Watson and all the _feelings_ associated with him.

“What time will you start conducting this business of yours?”

Sherlock jerks, the harsh reality of John’s voice crashing into his thoughts. The resulting momentary pull at his ribs causes a sharp intake of breath, which is followed by an embarrassed three-second-long blink. When he glances up again John is watching him with an interesting confliction of emotions. There’s anger, yes, but there is also concern, grudging concern, because he is still John and he still cares too much, even if he is now loathe to show it.

“Six AM,” Sherlock says with malevolence he wishes he feels. “You’re free to avoid me until then.”

“Right.”

John turns to leave even though Sherlock knows he is supposed to be examining him and updating the binder currently held far too tightly in John’s white-knuckled hands. No doubt he is deciding to come back later, when he is less angry, because even if he is now a sharper version of his John, even though Sherlock has been more than cruel and is more than deserving, John still does not want to hurt him.

 _That needs to change_ , he thinks. And so Sherlock speaks.

“John.”

John pauses, halfway out the door, and shifts to look at him, waiting, eyes hooded, almost as if he knows what Sherlock is going to say.

Sherlock smiles unkindly. “You’re still wearing the necklace.”

It is an intentionally cruel statement; said with deliberate malice.

John stares back at him for several seconds, utterly impassive, before answering. “You’re not.”

John then turns and continues his progression out the door leaving Sherlock with an odd gasping sensation in his chest and the feeling that perhaps he is not the only one who has learned how to be cruel.

***

John returns at 6 AM and not a moment sooner. Sherlock is talking to someone on speaker phone, his blackberry balanced precariously on one knee while peering at John’s laptop, equally precarious, on the opposite knee.

“Yes, Dimmock,” he says, glancing up as John enters, “I’ve got the feed now. Quality is terrible.”

“Well it’s the best we can do under the circumstances,” an exhausted voice answers from his phone.“Will you still be able to do…what you do?”

“Of course, don’t be ridiculous. None of these men are particularly good at concealing their emotions. Ah.” He leans closer to the laptop screen, winces, and shuffles it further down his thigh so he can see better without affecting his ribs. “I see we’re starting with Ramon. Excellent. Who’s interviewing?”

John, curious, moves to stand at the head of the bed. The video on the laptop’s screen is black and white. One half is a camera shot from the ceiling of an interrogation room where a man is slumped; white t-shirt and jeans, against the metal table. His hands are cuffed in front of him. The other half of the screen is clearly of the same man at the same location, but the angle is straight-on and a close-up of his torso and face. Or it would be, if he was sitting up. At the moment all John can see is dark hair and the curve of a spine beneath cotton. _Whoever it is needs to eat more,_ murmurs the doctor side of John’s mind _he’s too skinny._

 _“_ Agent McKale has this one,” the voice on the phone says. There is hesitance with the answer, which John understands when Sherlock lets out what can only be described as a noise of utter disgust.

“Imbecile. He’ll probably ruin everything. Honestly, Dimmock, _McKale_?”

The man on the other line, apparently called Dimmock, sounds exasperated as he answers. “Well apart from you and Victor he’s the most familiar with the language and the circumstances, and considering Victor isn’t answering his phone and you’re in the _hospital_ for some mysterious reason, he’s the best we’ve got. Now—“

On the laptop’s screen, a second man enters the interrogation room. And they stop arguing in favor of watching.

“Can you get me audio of this too?” he asks.

There is a crackly sigh. “No. I tried. I’ll just have to dictate.”

“Oh excellent. So now I’ve got grainy video _and_ your awful paraphrased Spanish translation to contend with.”

John clears his throat and throws Sherlock an annoyed look out of habit. It’s a long-dead habit, granted, but Sherlock catches it and responds by opening his mouth, starting to apologize out of habit as well, before snapping his teeth back together with an audible click. He sends John a look that seems to invite him to go to hell.

John takes a step back, not entirely sure what just happened. Apparently five years wasn’t enough time to completely expunge certain patterns. He decides that their little exchange would be a very interesting thing to study in the anthropological sense, but just as quickly decides not to dwell on it in favor of returning his attention to the conversation.

“Obviously he’s lying,” Sherlock is saying, gesturing toward the video feed. “Just look at his shoulders. Tell McKale to--No wait.” He touches a finger to the screen, frowning. “What did McKale just say him?”

“Uhh,” Dimmock takes a moment to answer, clearly trying to translate in his head. “He said it wasn’t worth lying because his father had already confirmed his guilt. He said he may as well help himself as his family certainly wasn’t going to.”

Sherlock taps the screen, still frowning. “Tell McKale to ask him why he hates his father.”

Dimmock, nonplused, does just that.

A moment later Sherlock grins at the computer screen. “You brought his girlfriend in, yes? Small, curvy, name’s Maria?”

“Uh—yes, but—“

“Bring her in. She’s pregnant. He’ll be much more useful if he knows.”

“What—how do you know she’s—wait, why doesn’t _he_ know? And how do _you_ know he doesn’t know?”

“In the initial interviews we did Maria kept her hands over her stomach, protective. When we asked if she had children she said no but it wasn’t quite the truth, not a lie, but not truth either; she must be pregnant. But when we asked Ramon if he had children he said no, just a fiancé. No lie. No guilt. He doesn’t know. But he wants children. He hates his father, wants to be a better one, loves his fiancé. If he knows she’s pregnant I’m sure he’ll be much more willing to cooperate if it means less jail time and he can get back to his little family sooner.”

“That’s—alright. Hold on.”

The phone on his knee beeps suddenly, and, at first, John thinks Dimmock put Sherlock on hold or something. Then it beeps again and he realizes it’s from an incoming call.

Sherlock scowls. “Dimmock, I’m getting a call from Scotland Yard. I’ll be back momentarily.”

He touches an annoyed finger to the face of the blackberry on his knee, voice turning sharp. Well, sharp- _er_.

“ _What_ , Lestrade. I’m in the middle of something.”

“It can wait,” a new voice says, sounding just as weary, if not more so, than Dimmock. “I need you in Belegravia within the hour.”

“Can’t. I’m in the hospital.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. What did you—nevermind. What’s the earliest you can get here?”

Sherlock glances at John, eyebrows raised, and he pursues his lips. “Three days,” John whispers.

He repeats this and the man on the line curses.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock says, voice ripe with condescension, “I’m on the other line with the CIA can you save your theatrics until I’ve finished with them?”

“It involves the CIA.” Lestrade says. “A Hungarian diplomat was just found dead in Victor Trevor’s hotel room and Trevor hasn’t been in contact with anyone for nearly a week.”

“Fuck.”

It’s the first time John has ever heard Sherlock curse. He flinches, not only at the foreign occurrence, but also at Sherlock’s face. There is nothing left of impassivity there, only horror.

The moment Sherlock realizes John is watching him, there is a quick shift and he’s back to looking vaguely annoyed.

“Are you at the scene?” he asks.

“Yes. Look, we can handle this without you but—“

“Absolutely not. Trevor is the least incompetent man I’ve worked with, I’ll not let your band of idiots bungle this. I’d rather he turn up alive next week and not as a corpse six months from now.”

Lestrade sighs on the other end. “I can take you through the scene if you’d like. I haven’t let anyone else in.”

John had long ago come to the mute understanding that with Sherlock’s brilliance came sarcasm and arrogance. Apparently Lestrade, whoever he was, understood that as well.

“Good. You have an Iphone, yes?” Sherlock asks Lestrade.

“Yeah, but—“

“I’m going to call you back. Don’t let anyone touch anything.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye, and then switches to the other line. “Dimmock?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Something’s come up. I’ll call you back in an hour.”

He ends the call with a violent thumbstroke, then shoves both the phone and the laptop, still playing grainy footage, off his knees in a sweeping, irritated gesture.

“I need your phone.”

It takes John a moment to realize he’s talking to him. “What?”

“Your phone.” Sherlock thrusts out an insistent hand, wiggling his fingers in agitation. “Now. I need it. Blackberries don’t have the facetime application.”

He doesn’t ask how he knew he had an Iphone, it’s Sherlock, after all. But John does as he requests, digging into his pocket, and then dropping the device into his waiting palm.

No _thank you_ , as usual.

John moves to sit in the chair, watching as Sherlock calls back Lestrade and holds the phone far too close to his face as the man begins to take him through a crime scene.

John tries to keep up, but most of the exchange goes over his head. There is a dead Hungarian in one of Sherlock’s associate’s apartments, shot once, center of the forehead. His associate is missing. Apart from that, John doesn’t really follow.

“What’s that?” Sherlock says suddenly after nearly a half-hour of subdued dialogue. John resists the urge to lean forward for a glimpse of the screen.

“Its…it’s a cigarette,” Lestrade answers.

“Check his pockets.”

Sherlock’s voice conveys only vague interest, but his face is a tumult of barely concealed emotion.

“Keys. Wallet. Phone,” Lestrade answers, “Looks like…a parking garage ticket stub. That’s it.”

“No cigarettes?” Sherlock asks.

“No.”

He squints at the small screen. “What kind of cigarette is it?”

“What? The one on the ground?”

“No, one of the _other_ cigarettes in the room, of course the one on the ground.”

Lestrade makes a disgruntled noise. “How the hell am I supposed to know? We’ll bag it, see if we can get any dna off it.”

“I need to know what kind it is,” Sherlock repeats.

“Well,” Lestrade answers, matching his tone, “I can get you that information once the lab has it.”

“God. You people are useless,” Sherlock mutters.

“What? Like _you_ would be able to tell what kind it was just by looking at it.”

“I would, actually. His wrists. Tell me about them.”

Lestrade sighs and the audio crackles. “His wrists. Pale? Rolex watch on his right hand. Nothing interesting.”

“His fingers, smell them.”

“What?”

“Smell them. Tell me if they smell like nicotine.”

There is a pause, an intake of breath, and then a second of silence before he speaks again.

“No. Maybe our victim wasn’t the one smoking the cigarette then. Maybe it was the killer.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock says. “Smell his mouth.”

“But—“

“Oh for god’s sake just do it. Is there nicotine there?”

Another pause, another breath.

“Yes. Definitely.”

Sherlock has his face so close to the Iphone his nose is practically touching it.

“Wait! Take off his gloves.”

There is a moments of silence. Lestrade makes a surprised noise, Sherlock looks delighted, and John finally gives in to the urge to lean forward.

On the screen he sees a grey-skinned hand, pale in a way only corpses are. But what’s interesting about this hand, is that it’s missing the tips of nearly all its fingers. They are blunted by the amputations, still slightly flushed with scar tissue at the tips.

“Burgers Disease,” Sherlock murmurs, in the same instant that John’s mind supplies it. “That explains some things.”

“It does?” Lestrade says. “What’s Burgers Disease?”

“I’m allergic to peanuts,” Sherlock answers.

“Excuse me?”

John tries to smother a laugh at the pure confusion in the other man’s tone and nearly chokes.

“Yes,” Sherlock continues, ignoring him. “If someone who’s eaten a peanut butter sandwich so much as breathes on me I’ll go into anaphylactic shock. Terribly inconvenient, I know. Luckily I’ve never experienced this though, because my older brother is deathly allergic as well and I was tested before someone unwittingly killed me.”

“Thrilling as this is,” Lestrade says, exasperation coloring his tone, “do you have a point?”

“Patience,” Sherlock answers, sounding bored. “Now, I’ve always been intensely curious about what a peanut tastes like, purely because it is something forbidden to me. And I’ve often thought that if given the opportunity, if I was on my deathbed and knew that within hours or possibly even minutes I would die, I would decide to spend my last moments of time eating peanuts.”

Lestrade doesn’t respond for several seconds. Sherlock waits expectantly.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “Was that the point?”

He throws himself back against the pillows, winces, and then turns the wince into a scowl. “Of course it’s the point, you imbecile. I don’t know why I even try to explain things anymore. The victim had Burgers Disease. Rare. When blood vessels in the appendages become blocked and then necrotic. Brought on by smoking. There’s no cure except for amputation and, naturally, never smoking another cigarette again. So why did he smoke one tonight? He knows so much as one puff could lead to more missing digits.”

“You’re saying he knew he was going to be killed.” John murmurs, and then snaps his mouth back closed.

“Finally. Someone who’s not completely incompetent,” he rolls his eyes at Lestrade’s sharp statement about discretion and involving civilian parties in government business.

“John is my doctor. His confidentiality is given. Now smell the victim’s fingers again, on the hand that is no longer gloved.”

There is a huff of annoyance, but Lestrade clearly does as he says, because he returns a moment later with, “Nicotine. Yes. So that means he took his gloves off, had a smoke, and then put them back on?”

“Apparently,” Sherlock grins, tipping his head to one side as he studies whatever is on the screen. “Oh, this is excellent. Quickly, get his wallet. Open it.”

“Alright. Got it.”

“What’s inside?”

“Id. A couple of credit cards, and…a receipt.”

His eyes close for a moment, teeth still bared in a vicious smile.

“The Receipt. It’s for cigarettes isn’t it?”

“Yes. Parliament lights and…hmm, that’s odd, some chick-lit magazine called Independent.”

His eyes open again. “What’s the time stamp?”

“ 8:21pm.”

“Cashier’s name?”

“Uhh. None listed. Self-checkout.”

Sherlock lunges forward suddenly, opening the laptop, and John takes an automatic step toward him. Sherlock has probably torn some stitches with that movement.

Sherlock’s fingers skitter across the keys and his smile becomes even more feral.

“Oh he was clever, wasn’t he,” he murmurs, and then in an entirely different voice, “Tibor Henerisc.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tibor Henerisc,” he repeats. That’s the clue he’s given us.”

“I’m not following.”

“You said the victim was Hungarian, on a visa.” Sherlock says slowly, as if talking to a child.

“Yes.”

“So. Hungary. The brand of the cigarettes: Parliament. The time stamp. 8-21. August 21st. That was election day in Budapest. The magazine title: Independent—there was one Independent elected last year to Hungarian Parliament: Tibor Heresic.”

“What—how do you know that?”

Sherlock looks vaguely smug. “Google. Now. I suggest you look into Mr. Heresic’s whereabouts and see if you can find the connection between him and our victim. Though, judging by this picture, I’m going to assume the connection is DNA.”

“Pardon?”

He leans forward, no doubt doing more damage to his sutures, and peers at the laptop in front of him. “I’m looking at a picture of Mr. Heresic right now. He’s very partial to your dead man there. See?” He holds the phone toward the screen so Lestrade can view the photograph himself. “Better choice of facial hair, but same chin and ears. Probably cousins. Now, if you’ll remember, I was in the middle of some rather important business with the CIA when you rudely interrupted. I should be getting back to that now. Let me know what you find regarding Heresic. Oh, and I want copies of Victor Trevor’s phone records and computer files.”

“I can have the phone records to you in an hour, but we don’t have Trevor’s password so the computer—“

“The password is ‘Alcatraz,’ capital ‘A,’ five in place of the Z.”

Lestrade sighs. “How do you know Trevor’s password?”

“We lived together for six weeks during the New York business. I know _everything_ about him. Get those files to me.”

“Will do.”

Sherlock hangs up and tosses John’s phone back to him. When he catches his disapproving expression he starts to roll his eyes, then aborts the movement suddenly, reaching for his blackberry.

“I’m fine. Give me half an hour to finish with Dimmock and you can check my sutures to your heart’s content.”

Considering Sherlock is already dialing and there isn’t any obvious blood staining his hospital gown, John returns to his seat with a sigh.

“Yes, Dimmock?” Sherlock says, settling the phone back on his knee. “Where were we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much only plot and Sherlock showing off this chapter. See you next week!


	6. Chapter 6

He’s impressed John. He can tell because five years or not, John is still John and John is still fascinated by Sherlock and the things he sees that other people can’t. When Sherlock does something particularly extraordinary John’s right eyebrow still twitches and his mouth still quirks at the corners and he ends up biting his lower lip to stop smiles he no doubt finds inappropriate.

_Unimportant._ Sherlock tells himself, and it is. But he still notices.

Sherlock sits back, discarding both phone and laptop once his work is done, watching with detached interest as John examines Sherlock’s various injuries. John’s hands are cold, dry, and Sherlock considers telling him that he should invest in some moisturizer because his excessive use of hand sanitizer is clearly affecting his skin. He doesn’t though, because he no longer has an excuse for investment in John’s well being, not as a whole, and certainly not something as minor as the state of his cuticles.

“I guess I should congratulate you,” John says, fingers pressing lightly into Sherlock’s abdomen. “It seems you’ve found your niche.”

“Possibly. I haven’t gotten bored yet, but I may still.”

“What is it, exactly, that you do?”

The question is somewhat embarrassed; as if John knows he has no right to ask it, but does anyway.

Sherlock winces as John dabs at a bit of blood escaping one corner of the wound, then answers as if he hadn’t.

“I’m a consulting detective. The CIA called me something completely ridiculous on my paperwork though, micro-expression analyst and behaviorist or some nonsense.”

“English, Sherlock,” John sighs, and the resigned phrase is so familiar, despite the years, that Sherlock pauses a second longer than actually needed to collect himself.

_No. Stop._

“I’m a detective, first and foremost” he says. “Primarily I consult with Scotland Yard, but I’ve shown competence in other areas which has allowed me to branch out into somewhat more precarious fields.”

John snorts at his careful wording. “‘Precarious fields’ meaning…what? Infiltrating international crime syndicates?”

“Yes,” he says, flatly, “exactly.”

John abruptly drops the corner of Sherlock’s hospital gown, moving to discard his gloves in the trashcan.

“You did tear one stitch at the corner but I think a dab of Dermabond will do in its place. I’ll check with Dr. Allen at rounds,” he glances at his watch. “Speaking of which, she’ll be here in less than ten minutes and I desperately need some caffeine. You aren’t expecting any more calls, are you?”

John is desperate to leave suddenly, though Sherlock can’t pinpoint any part of the conversation where he’d said something to prompt the change in behavior.

“No,” Sherlock answers slowly, still watching John’s movements. “I’m not expecting anything else for several hours.”

But his work isn’t exactly prescribed by schedule. _People are rarely murdered at convenient times,_ he thinks.

He glances up, considering speaking the thought aloud, it’s the sort of thing John used to find funny, but the badly concealed desperation on the other man’s face compels him to remain silent.

“Ok,” John moves toward the door, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“John.”

John pauses, and when he turns to face Sherlock again John’s jaw is clenched.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sure this doesn’t need to be voiced. But I want to make sure you understand that everything said through the course of the morning is strictly confidential.”

“I’m aware,” John snaps, and Sherlock is surprised by the venom in his voice. “I’m not _stupid_.”

“I know that,” Sherlock responds softly, and somehow that makes everything worse.

John shuts the door a little harder than necessary as he leaves.

***

John makes himself a cup of earl grey with violent movements and quietly uttered curses.

_English, Sherlock._ He’d said, exactly the way he’d said it a hundred times before in a hundred different happier scenarios. And he hadn’t even realized he done it until a minute later.

He hadn’t noticed, and that alone made his reaction abundantly worse.

_He’s made it clear he doesn’t care_ , John reminds himself, _at least pretend to return the sentiment._

He collapses on the badly-patched couch in the residents lounge, briefly wondering why the room always smells of burnt popcorn, and then lets his eyes close, paper cup resting on his chest. It is a warm familiar presence as he breathes.

_English, Sherlock._

 He knows he should get up and drink his tea and find Stamford, because getting lost in half-decade old memories is hardly productive, but he doesn’t. Because his memories of Sherlock are far more pleasant than the present version of him, smirking and bleeding and riddled with needle tracks two floors above him.

_English, Sherlock._

The first time he’d said it was the day things changed between them. Granted, things had changed after the incident with the missing shoes and the walk to the library and the slight loss of intrigue in the character that was Sherlock. But the day things really changed was when John saw him running.

It was a Tuesday, not a therapy day, and John nearly missed seeing him altogether. John’s mother had needed some things from the shops and he was walking home from school, taking somewhat of a scenic route so he could stop and pick up a few things for dinner, when he saw Sherlock.

He was running, which John immediately found wrong. Firstly, because Sherlock was barefoot again and secondly because he wasn’t running in a manner that could at all be described as extracurricular. He was running with the same sort of predatory fear small animals ran from dogs with. John watched as Sherlock skidded around the corner of the petrol station, ducking under the chain link fence, and then, a moment later, John understood. Three boys, practically men, really, appeared shortly afterward, following Sherlock around the corner, and clambering over the fence with a chorus of expletives John could easily hear from his vantage point, nearly a block away. He didn’t really even think before shoving the shopping list into his pocket and sprinting after them.

He caught up to them easily enough in the back garden of an empty townhouse a few moments later. They’d cornered Sherlock between an ivy-claimed stone wall and a half-collapsed shed and John couldn’t see much of Sherlock at all through the collection of ducked teenage heads and vicious reaching hands.

It didn’t make any sense, John thought. Three boys, at least his age, probably older, ganging up on a twelve year old kid? What was the point? Maybe they were just trying to scare him? But as John pushed his way through the gate, the other boys’ hands became fists and Sherlock’s sharp breaths turned to stifled exhalations of pain. Not just intimidation tactics then.

Sherlock was fighting back, John realized as he ran forward. Sherlock’s returning movements were measured and effective. But he was just one very small person and despite obvious skill he didn’t really stand a chance against his three, much larger, opponents.

_John_ would though.

“Hey,” John yelled, “the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

Sherlock’s juvenile assailants clearly hadn’t been expecting company. They stopped their assault, turning automatically to face John as he slowed his run to a jog. One of them was holding a strap of Sherlock’s backpack, the other strap still looped around his shoulder. He dropped it, causing Sherlock to fall in an uncoordinated mess of limbs to the ground; like a puppet with its strings cut.

None of them seemed inclined to answer John’s question. They were all wearing the same uniform Sherlock was and the same, relatively uncomfortable expressions. They were high class, generically pretty faces, with white teeth and soft hands. They didn’t know the first thing about fighting. _Too easy_ , John though, and stepped closer, too close for comfort apparently, as they all three took a step back in response.

That was encouragement enough.

“Fuck off,” he growled.

And they did just that.

John watched them leave with a grin, and then turned his attention to Sherlock, dropping to his heels beside the younger boy.

Sherlock was sitting up, arms resting on bent knees, looking just as impassive as usual, or at least as impassive as a person who’s just had their ass handed to them can look.

“That was unnecessary,” Sherlock said, using the back of one hand to wipe blood from his nose. He studied the red staining his knuckles with academic interest, and then dropped his wrist back to rest on his knee. “They weren’t intending to kill me or anything.”

“You’re welcome,” John answered wryly, offering him a hand. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

For a second John thought he intended to ignore the gesture, but after a moment’s consideration, Sherlock accepted his assistance and said, with studied care, “thank you.”

John smiled in response and for a fleeting moment he could have sworn Sherlock looked pleased with himself.

John caught Sherlock’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, studying the already bruising area at his temple, and then touched fingers to either side of his nose. It wasn’t broken, at least, he decided, before turning his attention to the split that perfectly bisected his bottom lip.

“God, Sherlock,” he said. “You look like shit.”

"You, also, have an appearance similar to that of shit," Sherlock countered tentatively.

John paused, considering the other boy’s vaguely hopeful expression. “Was that a joke?”

“Why?” Sherlock asked, serious. “Was it funny?”

John laughed, running a hand through Sherlock’s curls, feeling for any unseen injuries.

“Yes. And you look a lot worse off than I do.”

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Sherlock responded, ducking to pick up his backpack. “Nightmares, I imagine. Your face is all wrong.”

John didn’t comment on that and they moved together in silence back out onto the sidewalk.

When they reached the corner of 22nd Sherlock started to cross the street and John stopped him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“The library,” he answered. He didn’t bother to conceal the _obviously_ in his tone.

“False. You’re coming home with me. There’s no telling if those morons are waiting around for you somewhere. Besides, you can’t just walk around in public like that.”

John gestured to Sherlock’s face as a whole to prove his point, then curled his fingers around Sherlock’s wrist, tugging him back to his side.“I’ll walk you home once we’ve got you cleaned up, OK?”

Sherlock glowered at him, but didn’t respond. John figured that was as close to a yes as he was going to get.

“So. Do you want to tell me why three teenage boys felt the need to beat you senseless?”

Sherlock shrugged. “I happened to inform one of our instructors of some indiscretions on their part, the nature of which led to their expulsion and subsequent interest in harming my person.”

“English, Sherlock,” John sighed.

“They cheated,” he muttered. “I exposed them. They found out and were less than happy.”

“What did they cheat on?”

John noticed Sherlock was walking a little funny, and studied the unevenness in his stride as he answered.

“Fifty percent of our final grade is a thesis paper that was due last week. The papers they turned in were not their own work. They had someone else write them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because. I was the one that wrote them.”

John stopped, and Sherlock paused, glancing back at him with a placid look. “What?”

“ _You_ wrote papers for them?”

Sherlock started walking again, and John followed out of habit.

“I’m twelve,” Sherlock answered easily, “I can’t work and my brother monitors my finances. I write papers for a bit of spending money when I need it. That’s the problem though. I wrote their papers, they received the grades we agreed on, but they refused to pay me.”

“How much do you charge?”

He shrugged, voice still impassive. “Depends on the assignment. Normal papers are between twenty and thirty pounds. Thesis papers are different. Two hundred for an A, one hundred fifty for a B, one hundred for a C. They all wanted A’s and they all got them, but they didn’t pay.”

John nearly stopped walking again as Sherlock listed off the sums of money. He whistled instead.

“So you turned them in?”

“Hardly. Then I would be in just as much trouble. I posted their papers online in a student forum under an anonymous profile, and then emailed their teacher a list of their names with a link to the forum.The email address I used isn’t registered to me, so it was anonymous as well. The teacher thought they plagiarized some online professional. I’ll never be suspect.”

John whistled again, grinning. “Nice. What happened to them?”

“They’ve all three been expelled. Like I said. They aren’t happy with me.”

John nodded toward a side street, letting him know they were about to leave the main road. “So why did you do it? You must have known they’d come after you.”

“Because. People don’t like me, and that’s fine, I don’t need them to like me. But I do want them to respect me, and if I’d let them get away with not paying me, I would have lost that respect. What would stop others from doing the same in the future if I hadn’t? It was necessary.”

Sherlock’s stride hitched when they stepped off the curb and John caught his elbow before he could fall.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” he answered, shaking off his hand.

“Lie,” John deadpanned.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but after a few seconds of silence admitted, “I think I twisted my ankle.”

John jerked a thumb toward his back. “You want a lift?”

Sherlock gave him a look that clearly stated that would sure as hell not be happening.

“Thought I’d offer,” he laughed, and tugged off Sherlock’s backpack instead. “At least let me carry this.”

Sherlock threw him another dirty look, but didn’t protest as he was rid of the weight.

“So…do you have any friends?” John asked, truly curious.

Sherlock turned to study his expression, clearly expecting some sort of malice behind the question. When he saw none he touched his tongue to his bottom lip, dissolving the clot there. Fresh blood welled, moving sluggishly to linger in the dip of his chin.

“No,” Sherlock said. “Children my own age don’t understand me and the students at my school think I’m strange, at best. I told you before. People don’t like me.”

John shrugged. “ _I_ like you. I mean, yeah, I get the weird thing. But, you’re not so bad.”

Sherlock didn’t respond to that, but John hadn’t really expected him to. They didn’t speak much for the next half hour as he let Sherlock into his less than impressive home and helped doctor Sherlock’s various injuries.

Sherlock sat John’s couch with an icepack on his ankle and John tried to do homework while Sherlock watched an episode of some detective show. Sherlock picked out the killer within the first six minutes, mocked various characters, listed all the ways the story line was flawed, and by the end of the program declared the whole thing a massive waste of time. John switched to a nature program about bacteria that thoroughly captured Sherlock’s interest. John returned to the final pages of Hamlet with a sigh, trying not to grin as Sherlock moved from the couch to the floor in an attempt to get closer to the television screen.

_He may be a genius_ , John thought, _but he’s still a kid._

John offered to walk Sherlock home at the end of the second program, which thankfully was free of disdainful remarks. Sherlock declined, made a short, nearly monosyllabic call on his mobile phone, and a few minutes later a black town car was in front of the house.

Sherlock noticed its arrival before John did and stood, slinging his backpack onto his shoulder. He handed the icepack back to John.

“Thank you,” he said again, just as seriously and carefully as he had the first time.

John made certain to smile in response and was not disappointed when Sherlock returned the gesture. Granted, it was a very muted smile, but it was something.

“I’ll see you Friday,” John said, walking him to the door.

Sherlock didn’t answer, just limped down the driveway, opened the back passenger door to the car, and disappeared from view. The windows were tinted too dark for him to see inside, but John doubted he returned his wave as he watched the car pull out of the driveway and onto the street.

_Well_. He thought. _It seems I’ve made friends with a sociopath._

****

John’s pager goes off and he nearly spills tea all over himself. Luckily he remembers the cup is perched on his chest in the same instant that he sits up, so only a very little bit sloshes onto his coat before he catches it. He studies the darkening mark for a moment, and then decides he doesn’t care. The coat has already seen a surfeit of various stains, tea being low on the list of most disgusting.

He takes a few hurried sips, trying to force the last lingering images of twelve year old Sherlock from his head, then stands, bins the tea, and heads off to rounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

_I was innocent, once,_ Sherlock thinks, touching careful fingers to the inside crook of his arm. The thin skin there is a collage of fresh needle tracks and faded scars; the past and present converging around a pin-prick of dried blood from his recently withdrawn IV line.

The hollow area ( _antecubital region_ ) is hypersensitive and the movements of his calloused fingertips ( _13 years of bruising violin strings_ ) border on becoming painful as he traces the subtle map of veins on his forearm. It makes his feel helpless.

Despite the lingering morphine in his system he can feel the weight of his injuries. Stitches pull and adhesive itches and he has never wanted quite so badly to escape the noise and brightness and general unsettling chaos of breathing and blinking and acting out the part of human. He wants to shut himself away— away from everyone and everything and just stop thinking and feeling and observing and cataloguing and hypothesizing and _being_. He wants darkness. Silence. And he can have it. He knows exactly how to make that happen, but that’s what got him here in the first place, and Mycroft has, no doubt, been through all his hiding places and flushed any remaining dregs of sanity to be found there. Sherlock might be clever enough to fool a narcotics team, but Mycroft is Mycroft, and therefore a different story entirely.

He curls his fingers, watching the tendons in his arm flex; watching the damaged skin move over stretching sinews below. He studies the subtle shifts of anatomy and can’t help but recognize, if only briefly, the fragility of his own life. That coupled with lingering withdrawal symptoms and the throb of pain in his side is enough to make him groan. It is a quiet, restrained groan, but still audible nonetheless. He wants to go home. And, yes, he wants darkness and stillness and quiet and everything else but at that moment what he wants most is to just be somewhere John Watson isn’t. Because it is this exact brand of muddled vulnerability that leads to stupid decisions and he’s already made a surfeit of those where John is involved.

 _Sentiment_ , he thinks, and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes.

“Sherlock.”

_Go away. Please go away. I can’t do this right now. Please._

_No. Stop._

He drops his hands. He opens his eyes.

“John.”

Perfect. There is no heart monitor clipped to a betraying finger’s pulse this time. He lets his eyelids fall to half-mast. He tries to straighten without flinching.

“Am I free to go?” he asks.

“Yeah. Mycroft is just finishing a phone call outside. He’ll be here with a wheelchair in a second.”

He doesn’t say anything because there is nothing to say, and because at the moment silence seems like the safest option.

“Sherlock.”

John’s voice is wrong. Not wrong in the past vs. present sense, but wrong in an emotionally-varied _wrong_ kind of sense. John swallows whatever the following words were intended to be, and starts again.

“Sherlock I know it’s not my place anymore but—“

 __ “John. Stop.”

 _Hydrogen._ He thinks quickly, _Helium. Lithium._

“This doesn’t change anything,”( _Berylium_ ) “If you’re hoping for some sort of reconciliation my opinion on the subject hasn’t changed, regardless of present circumstances.”

_Boron. Carbon. Nitrogen._

John’s face does its new horrible thing where his jaw tightens and his expression clears and Sherlock can only read things in the corners of his eyes and the curve of clenched fingers and it hurts Sherlock nearly as much as what John does next.

“Regardless,” John says, “Here’s my current contact information.” He places a folded piece of paper by Sherlock’s knee, careful not to touch him. He meets his eyes for a moment and Sherlock lets it happen before he has the sense not to.

 _Oxygen. Fluorine_. ( _God his eyes_ ) _Neon, Sodium, Magnesium._

“Hold on to it,” John continues, one finger lingering on the paper. “You know, in case I can ever make myself _useful_ to you again.”

 _Magnesium_ … _Phosphorus. No. That isn’t right. Fuck._

Sherlock blinks but his eyes stay closed too long to be a blink. It hadn’t been an intentional movement but it happens nonetheless and a second later there are retreating footsteps—maybe John thinks Sherlock is ignoring him, maybe he thinks it’s a sign of dismissal, he has no idea what John thinks, not anymore, but regardless, when he opens his eyes again, John is gone.

He picks up the slip of paper with careful movements, halving it, and then halving it again.

He knows he should throw it away, but he doesn’t.

****

Their relationship had never been normal. John knows that. He doubts the word “normal” can be applied to any facet of Sherlock’s life. But trying to describe his past friendship with the man is downright near impossible. No one had understood at the time, least of all him, and trying to figure it out after the fact is no less impossible. He had been sixteen when they first met, good grades, varsity football team player. Sherlock had been twelve, awkward, swinging from socially inept to frighteningly intuitive within the space of seconds, rude, generally disliked, and completely friendless. John’s mother had made comments when Sherlock started coming over to their house after school. At first it was teasing, _babysitting again, John?_ then confused, and then, eventually, he’d stopped caring, because Sherlock had somehow became a habit; a habit that lasted four years. And it seemed John was still suffering the dregs of withdrawal.

He was trying to make sense of things; trying to catalogue how their odd relationship had turned into a friendship to begin with. It had started with the bare feet, he thought, or maybe the day he’d saved him. After the incident involving the three cheating prep-boys, a bloodied lip and deconstructing a detective show, John had expected things between him and his odd acquaintance to continue as they had before. But the following Friday, when he arrived to the therapists office, Sherlock was not in his customary position, nor did he ignore John when John sat down. Sherlock was sitting cross-legged, fingers woven together in his lap. He frowned at John as if he had done something worth punishing.

“Stay after your appointment today,” Sherlock said.

“Hey. Nice to see you too,” he replied.

Sherlock didn’t respond and John sighed.

“Sorry. Why should I stay after?”

The younger boy didn’t answer, moving back into his effigy position, and John sighed a second time, withdrawing his badly abused copy of hamlet.

He stayed.

Sherlock met him at the curb when his appointment was over.

“I’m going to help you pass your English class,” he said conversationally.

John wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Um. Okay. Why?”

“Because. It is owed.”

“Owed?”

Sherlock made an annoyed gesture, “For Tuesday.”

“Look, that’s not—I don’t expect anything out of that. It’s not like I did it so I could—Just, no. Don’t worry about it.”

“Let me. Please.”

Sherlock said the coercing words like a statement, not a request. There was no higher pitch at the end of the phrase than the beginning. His expression was solemn.

John considered Sherlock’s still-battered face, where the bruises had faded to a sickly yellow, and frowned.

“Are you serious?”

“I never joke.”

John snorted. “Never? –I seem to recall you saying you wanted to be a shrink when you grew up.”

Sherlock’s mouth twitched at the corner. “I rarely joke,” he amended.

“Fine. I’m not going to turn down help. Library?”

“Sure.”

John thought about the funny looks he would get if anyone from his school saw him being tutored by a twelve year old. “Or…we could go to my house again, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure,” Sherlock repeated.

“I should warn you,” John said, standing, “I’m hopeless.”

“Not entirely,” Sherlock said, and for some reason that gave him a completely irrational surge of pride.

Sherlock took him through the first act of Hamlet that night. And damn if he didn’t actually make it understandable. John resignedly asked if he would cover not only Hamlet, but the prior books as well and Sherlock agreed on the condition that John walk him home from school for the final three weeks of class. That way he wouldn’t be vulnerable to another shoe-less incident. John shook Sherlock’s seriously proffered hand without hesitation.

The following week was strange, to say the least. John picked Sherlock up at the gates of his ridiculously opulent school at precisely 3:15 every day. They went back to John’s house, scrounged together some sort of snack, and then he sat on the floor and listened while Sherlock explained the nuances of Hamlet and Ophelia and feigned madness. They finished Hamlet on Wednesday and spent Thursday reviewing Beowulf. Friday, Sherlock demanded John bring The Illiad, the first book his class had covered, to therapy with him and they started reviewing it in the waiting room.

When Dr. Sebring opened his door at 3:45 to call John’s name he raised his eyebrows, but made no comment on the fact that his sociopathic patient had his head ducked close to another human being, fingers splayed to outline a quote in the book they shared, carefully explaining the unfailing love that brave Hector had for his wife and child.

The following week was more of the same, until Friday morning when John awoke to a text message from a blocked number.

 _Out of town_. _I emailed you a review for your final exam. I expect you’ll get an A if you use it properly. See you next Friday at therapy—SH_

 _How did you get my phone number?_ John replied.

Not surprisingly, he didn’t receive an answer.

John used the review and the following Friday he entered the office with a grin.

“I got an A,” he told Sherlock.

“You used the review properly then.”

“So, what do you want to do to celebrate?“ John asked, “We can order takeout and watch some telly tonight. I recorded that show about the Brazilian ants you wanted to see.”

Sherlock’s face did a funny thing. “Finals are over. It’s summer holidays. You don’t need me anymore. And I no longer need you.”

“Oh. I know, I just thought…nevermind.”

Sherlock shifted, looking oddly uncomfortable. “Isn’t it customary for teenagers to observe the beginning of summer with friends and music and illegally obtained alcoholic beverages?”

John couldn’t decide if he should laugh or sigh. “Yes, but…I don’t exactly have friends anymore,” he admitted. “Not since the thing with my dad. Everyone looks at me sort of sideways now.”

Sherlock ran a hand through his dark curls, and then jumped as Dr. Sebring’s door opened.

“Yes,” he said as he stood.

“What?”

“Yes,” Sherlock repeated. “I’ve been wanting to see the Brazilian ant show.”

“Oh. Right. Okay.” John agreed.

And that was that.

Sherlock spent nearly every day at John’s house that summer. He was a condescending, prideful, pedantic little person, and half the time he drove John absolutely insane. He could quote full pages of Shakespeare and list the period table from memory, which he did, often and loudly when John had done something to frustrate him, but Sherlock knew very little about people. He could be innocent and polite and perfectly mannered in a disturbingly conniving way when it suited him, like the rare moments when John’s mother was home. But the little plays of normalcy were just that: segments of theater. John couldn’t decide if he should be flattered or not by the fact that Sherlock put on absolutely no airs at all when Sherlock was alone with him. The boy was infuriating. But he was also brilliant, and that, at first anyway, was what kept John from throwing him out the door.

When John admitted he wanted to be a doctor, Sherlock started bringing him medical journal articles and helped research universities that were good for pre-med students. He bought a bio-chem textbook online and they tried to muddle through it together when the heat became too much and they were forced indoors.

Sometimes they would people-watch. They would sit for hours as John pointed to person after person and Sherlock described the sorts of people they were. “Look at his posture,” he would say, “look at the way he twists his rings, the way his face shifts when he speaks to his son.” Sherlock would declare people decent and hardworking or adulterous scum from a few eye movements and then explain why and John would grin and pick out their next victim. It was the best summer of his life. And when the following school year started it was an unspoken agreement that their friendship would continue. And so it did, for three more years anyway, until the whole unusual situation dissolved into an unmitigated disaster.

***

John waits outside Sherlock’s room, making a conscious effort not to let his face reflect his thoughts, and when Mycroft turns the corner, pushing an empty wheelchair, John rolls his shoulders off the wall and moves to meet him.

“I take it you tried to have some sort of ruinous reconciliatory conversation with my brother,” Mycroft says lightly.

“Something like that,” John agrees.

“I assume he wasn’t receptive.”

“To say the least.”

Mycroft studies him, eyebrows tugged into the shallowest of frowns.

“What’s troubling you, John?” he asks resignedly. “There’s clearly something you want to say to me.”

“I…” He drops his eyes, resisting the urge to turn and look at Sherlock through the glass. “What happened to him, Mycroft? I don’t understand.”

“What ever do you mean?”

John shakes his head at the other man’s feigned confusion. “He different. Badly different. I mean, he’s always been scary smart and completely inappropriate. But this? He was never like this. Even at his most manic. He’s—he’s cruel now, Mycroft. Constantly. And I don’t even think it’s purposeful. It’s like his default setting is malicious.”

John sighs, reaching to pull at his necklace before quickly aborting the movement.

“I never believed he was a sociopath before,” he says, dropping his hands. “I might be convinced now.”

Mycroft studies him with an unreadable expression. He drums his fingers on the top of the wheelchair and abruptly looks away. “Time changes people, John. A lot can happen in five years.”

“Clearly.”

Neither of them says anything for several seconds, and John reaches out one hand, resigned. “I guess we won’t be seeing each other again.”

The other man accepts the gesture, grip slightly tighter than necessary.

“I hope not,” he agrees, “no offense intended.”

“None taken.”

They part without another word and five minutes later Sherlock Holmes is driven away in a black BMW while John Watson watches from a window four stories above.

He doesn’t see Sherlock again for six months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a day late! I was out of town and hadn't considered the hotel's possible wifi restrictions. On the plus side, I had an interview for one of my top choice PhD programs and it went really well. So. Yay!


	8. Chapter 8

Its 4 am and John has been on call for sixteen hours when his mobile phone rings. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize. He ignores it, shoving his face back into the scratchy pillow in the on-call room. A few seconds later the screen lights up again.

He answers it with badly concealed annoyance.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hi. Do you know a Sherlock Holmes?”

John considers hurling his phone against the nearest wall, but restrains himself.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name is Detective Inspector Lestrade. I couldn’t get a hold of Mrs. Hudson and you’re the only other contact listed in his phone apart from Mycroft.” There is a pause. “And calling Mycroft wouldn’t be the best idea right now, I don’t think.”

John sits up, rubbing angry fingers—too hard—into his eyes. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

“I—“ there’s a shuffle of phone speakers against fabric and the voice on the other line drops. “Look can you come down to the station and get him by any chance? Usually I’d just bring him home with me but I’m in the middle of something and I don’t want to leave him in lock up all day. Especially not like this. He’s high as a kite.”

“Fuck.” John says, because, honestly, what else is there to say.

“That a yes?” the detective inspector asks.

John starts to pull on his shirt, forgetting he’s holding a phone to his ear, and aborts the movement. “Yeah, yes. I’m on my way.”

“Just say you’re looking for me when you come in, alright?”

“Yeah. Ok. Bye.”

John finishes putting on his shirt and shoves his feet into his shoes, dialing Stamford’s number.

He answers on the second ring. “John? What’s wrong?”

“Hey, I’ll buy you lunch for a month if you take the rest of my shift starting in…” he glances at his watch, “ten minutes.”

“You got it. Will you make it to rounds or will I need to cover for you?”

“No idea,” he answers.

“Alright. Good luck with whatever it is,” his friend says.

“Thanks.”

John hangs up and jogs for the elevator wondering why the hell he’s digging cab money out of his pocket at 4am to rescue a man who has absolutely no interest in being saved.

The yard is nearly empty when he arrives; hands shoved deep into pockets, blinking against the bright lights as he steps inside.

“I’m looking for Detective Inspector Lestrade?” he says, the statement coming out like question.

The woman at the front desk nods distractedly, then swivels in her chair to yell behind her. “Hey Lestrade! Your guy is here.”

A few seconds later an attractive man with prematurely grey hair, comes jogging from around the corner, looking relieved.

“John?” he asks, leaning over the desk to shake his hand. “Greg Lestrade.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you, look…you want to explain what’s going on here because I’m kind of lost.”

“Right, yeah,” Greg nods his head to the side and a moment later opens the partition, allowing John past the front desk and into the back. “Follow me, I’ll explain on our way.”

They weave through a maze of empty open-air desks, then pass a double row of cubicles before starting up a staircase.

“I try to check in on him once a week or so,” Lestrade says, “nothing scheduled or anything, just if I’m nearby his flat, you know? Most of the time he’s working but when he’s not…well, when he’s not got something to puzzle over he goes a little crazy.”

“Are you referring to the heroin?” John asks bluntly.

The other man winces, holding open the stairwell door. “Sometimes, yeah. But he’s been better recently, clean for months, ever since what happened last time, with getting stabbed and all. That’s why I was surprised to find him like, well like he is, tonight.”

He gestures for John to go in front of him through double doors that lead to yet another florescent-lit hallway.

“How is he, exactly?” John asks, despite not really wanting to hear the answer.

“Out of it. Badly. He’s still on the downward slope at the moment, but in a few hours he’ll be crashing hard. I called Mrs. Hudson to see if she could look after him, but she didn’t answer and I doubt she should be left to deal with him in this state anyway. I don’t know how you factor in to his life, but I figure you must be someone important if you’re in his phonebook.”

“Important,” John repeats, “right.”

The other man doesn’t seem to notice the sarcasm.

“Anyway, technically I should have put him in lockup but,” he shakes his head with an embarrassed expression. “Well, we all make exceptions for Sherlock, I guess.”

Greg pulls open the door to an office, and then flicks on the lights. “If you wouldn’t mention this whole exchange to anyone, I’d appreciate it.”

John stops paying attention to the uncomfortable police officer when he catches sight of Sherlock in the corner. He is curled in on himself, a felt blanket cocooning the curve of his lean body. His right cheek is pressed to his left knee. His eyes are all pupil.

“John,” he says, surprisingly lucid.

“Sherlock,” John responds, kneeling beside him.

Sherlock doesn’t protest as John drags his knuckles across his forehead, then checks his pulse.

“Can you walk?” John asks.

Sherlock doesn’t answer, just looks at him, eyes wide and somber.

“I had to all but carry him,” Greg says behind him. “Which is probably a good thing, really. If he wasn’t so out of it I’d never have gotten him into my car.”

John moves forward, hooking one arm around Sherlock’s back, and pulls him into a standing position. Greg holds the door, and then takes Sherlock’s other side as they move back into the hall.

“He have something against your car?” John asks, “or you personally?”

Lestrade laughs. “He doesn’t do cars. Freaks the hell out if you try to put him in one. Walks everywhere or takes the tube.”

“Bullshit,” John mutters, “he spent plenty of time in cabs with me when we were kids.”

“Well,” Greg shrugs as they start back down the stairs, slower this time. His expression is suddenly guarded. “He doesn’t do them anymore.”

“How do you know him, by the way?” John asks. He nearly trips as Sherlock suddenly turns his face into John’s neck. He moves his nose back and forth twice, and then tucks his forehead closer, breathing against John’s skin.

“Long story,” Greg says. There is a certain amount of wryness in his tone as he holds the second door. “Weird story. Though I’ll tell it to you when I get off if you’d like. I don’t have the time now. I’m pushing my luck as it is.”

He walks John and his cargo to the front doors, and then pulls out his mobile. “You want to give me your address? I’ll come by when my shift ends to check on him, and, I guess, explain a couple things.” He gives John the guarded look again. “It seems you don’t know about some stuff.”

“What?” John frowns, looking down at Sherlock’s dark-curled head, then back at the detective inspector. “What stuff?”

“Look,” Greg says apologetically, waving for a cab. “I’ve really got to go…address?”

John gives it to him, and then moves to settle Sherlock across the back seat of the car that pulls to the curb.

Sherlock laughs, and then sobers immediately when John catches his chin.

“Something funny?” John asks.

Sherlock reaches out one hand, and touches John’s right eyebrow, letting his fingertips fall the length of his face, trailing them down John’s outstretched arm, finally coming to rest over John’s hand on his own cheek.

“John,” he says simply, and John sighs, ducking away.

“I’m taking you to my place,” he murmurs, moving to the other side. “I know you probably aren’t coherent enough to understand that, but I figure I should let you know.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer but John hadn’t expected him to.

Sherlock’s eyes stay fixed on his face for the entirety of the drive.

John mostly carries Sherlock upstairs, getting a judgmental look from his first floor neighbor who sits on her tiny porch, sipping tea as they pass. Once inside, John considers leaving Sherlock on the couch, but bypasses it before the thought is even fully formed. Instead John settles him, ratty blanket and all, on his still-unmade bed, where Sherlock pulls one of John’s pillows to his chest, making an odd noise of contentment. His eyes finally close then and John watches as Sherlock curves himself around the pillow, forehead pressed to its top, knees tucked up to the bottom.

John leaves him like that, the door to his room open, and moves back into the kitchen to make himself some breakfast. It is sure to be a very long day.

When Sherlock stumbles out of John’s room four hours later, he looks like hell.

And when he catches sight of John, reading on the couch, he pauses, swaying, a look of complete bafflement on his sharp features. “John?”

“Sherlock,” John responds. He sets aside the textbook he’d been frowning at and stands as Sherlock tries to take another step but doesn’t quite manage it. He ends up on the floor before John has the forethought to catch him.

Sherlock glares up at John as he observes, arms crossed, from a few feet away.

“It seems you’ve relapsed,” John says lightly.

“Fuck you,” Sherlock answers. The intended vehemence of the statement is somewhat lost though, considering he’s in a crumpled pile on the floor. “Where’s my mobile?”

“I imagine Detective Inspector Lestrade still has it,” John says, extending a hand to him. “He’s the one who pawned you off on me. Friend of yours?”

Sherlock curls his upper lip, ignoring John’s proffered palm, and after a moment John drops his arm.

“Regardless, I’m not sure what he expected me to do with you. I should probably just call your brother.”

Sherlock’s face pales beneath the remnants of a tan that still lingers about his features. He swallows once before answering in a considerably cowed voice. “Please don’t.”

“I’ll consider it if you explain a few things.”

Sherlock pulls his knees to his chest, chin settling in the dip between them and squints at the light coming through the open blinds. He clearly has no intention of leaving the floor. “Ask,” he murmurs, closing his eyes.

John sighs, moving to sit beside him.

“What did you take?”

“Heroin,” he answers tonelessly. “Stupid question.”

“How?”

“Intravenous.”

“How much?”

“150 milligrams.”

“Damn it, Sherlock.” John takes a breath through his mouth, letting it out through his nose. He rubs the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Before today, when was the last time you used? And I mean anything, not just heroin.”

“I _only_ use heroin,” he mutters, sounding insulted.

“How long?” He repeats.

“Five months, three weeks, four days. You tell me what time it is and I’ll give you hours and minutes too.”

John ignores the snide tone for the words behind them. “Why today?” he asks, “Nearly six months clean, what prompted this?”

“It’s a Tuesday,” Sherlock answers, as if that is an answer at all.

“Why does that matter?”

“Because. Tuesdays are boring.”

John resists the urge to slap him, if only barely. “I’m serious, Sherlock.”

“I am too.”

“Explain it to me then. Why _this_ Tuesday? There have been other Tuesdays in the last six months.”

Sherlock hugs his knees closer, rocking slightly on his heels. “I can’t explain it. Not to you. You have no idea what it’s like, to be tortured by your own mind.”

“Really?” he says sharply, and the edge to John’s voice must register with Sherlock because Sherlock opens his eyes briefly, studying John’s face.

“Sorry,” he whispers, and it sounds like he means it.

Sherlock considers John, eyes squinted more than necessary in the muted mid-day light, and then blinks once, slowly.

“You were shot.”

It’s a statement, not a question, and has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation, but John answers it anyway.

“Yes.”

“Close range.”

“Yes,” he agrees again.

“Where?”

John raises one eyebrow. “I’d think you, of all people, would be able to figure that out.”

“Shoulder,” he answers promptly. “Obvious.” His eyes drift, cataloguing John’s body in a series of quick movements. “You limp when you’re tired, though. Psychosomatic?”

“That’s what my therapist says.”

“Oh.” The soft exhalation is nearly unintelligible. “Can I see?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

John stands, moving into the kitchen so he doesn’t have to look at Sherlock any more. He uses hospitality as an excuse.

“Do you want anything to drink? Any food?”

He doesn’t answer and John glances back at him. “Sherlock?”

“Water,” he says, and then, somewhat uncomfortably, “I think I need to sleep some more.”

“Fine.”

John fills him a glass from the tap, then moves forward, hand extended. “I’ll help you back to bed.”

This time Sherlock’s fingers curl around his without question.

“Are you going to call Mycroft?” He asks.

John considers him, tucked against his side, leaning more on him than his own feet, and he sighs.

“No. Not right now, anyway.”

Sherlock doesn’t say “thank you” as he settles under the covers, but the expression on his face is thanks enough.

“Sleep well. I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”

He doesn’t get an answer to that either and John returns to his textbook with a sigh, fingers unconsciously moving to tug at the chain around his neck.

_What the hell are you doing?_ He asks himself.

For the life of him, he isn’t able to come up with an acceptable answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm deviating from cannon with the heroin instead of cocaine thing. But it should make sense eventually, I promise. See you next week!


	9. Chapter 9

Detective Inspector Lestrade arrives just past five pm at John’s door. The policeman brings with him a burst of cool air and a plastic bag of Chinese takeout. Sherlock is still sleeping.

They stand in the doorway to the bedroom, studying the slow rise and fall of Sherlock’s ribcage, and then, with a joint sigh, return to the living room.

“So how’s he been?” Greg asks.

John opens a box of chow mein, shrugging, “He was coherent for about ten minutes around lunch, then went back to bed. He’s been sleeping for the last six hours or so.”

Greg nods as if this is a normal occurrence, and breaks apart his wooden chopsticks, clicking them together in a predatory manner.

“Is your last name ‘Watson’ by any chance?” Greg asks, surveying the food.

“Yeah,” John answers, frowning, “Why?”

“Sherlock’s got a necklace with your name on it.”

 _He kept it._ John thinks, and isn’t able to think anything else for several seconds.

“What’s it look like?” John asks, just to be sure.

“Mmm, silver chain, little round metal tag that says 'property of John Watson, if found please return'.” Greg gestures with his chopsticks for a moment, the equivalent of a shrug, “looks like there used to be a phone number on the back but it’s too worn down to read now. We’ve all wondered about it at some point or another. No one bothered to ask though, he’s not really the type to tell you something just because you want to know it.”

John doesn’t say anything for several seconds, watching as the policeman shovels noodles into his mouth. He touches the disk of his own necklace through the fabric of his shirt. He glances toward his bedroom and resists the urge to go check Sherlock’s pale throat. “He’s not wearing it now,” John says, knowing his voice comes out all wrong.

Greg shakes his head, swallowing. “He doesn’t anymore. The chain broke in the middle of a case he was working for me last year and he nearly drowned himself chasing after the stupid thing when it ended up in the Thames.” Greg catches the look on John’s face and laughs. “Don’t ask. Anyway, he keeps it at his flat now, hung over the lamp on his nightstand.”

Greg slurps another mouthful of noodles while John processes that information.

“I know you asked how it was I knew him,” Greg says, “but I’d like to hear your story as well, if you wouldn’t mind.”

John pulls his attention away from the hallway and back to Greg. He considers trying to eat something and then puts his chopsticks down, feeling vaguely nauseous.

“We met back when I was in secondary school,” he says finally, “He was only twelve then but already in sixth form.”

Greg considers this, reaching for a spring roll. “So what happened?”

John can’t decide if the detective inspector is particularly perceptive or if his expression is just that obvious.

“We were close. For a few years anyway. I joined the army straight out of uni, was deployed pretty much immediately. We kept in touch for a few months and then…” John reaches for the chopsticks again, because he needs to do something with his hands and that is currently the least-violent option. “Anyway, I hadn’t heard from him since until he showed up six months ago in the ER.”

“You’re a doctor?” Greg says, wisely steering clear of the obvious question to be asked.

“Yeah.”

John moves to the kitchen and retrieves two beers from the refrigerator, chopsticks still clenched in one hand. “What about you? What’s your story?”

The policeman grins. “Like I told you, it’s a bit long.”

“We’ve got time.” John hands Greg a beer and he takes it with a thankful salute.

“Well, the first time I met him I was 24, just my second year on the force. They had me out on a stretch of road to pick up street racers—the uh—the curve of i10 right before Becker, you know the place?”

John nodded and he continued.

“Well it was two or so AM and I was trying not to fall asleep, waiting for someone to come speeding around the corner, and sure enough here comes this motorcycle going 100 easy, there and then just gone like that—“ he snaps his fingers. “So I tear off after it but there’s no chance. I lose him less than a minute. Well, when I’m clocking out I mention the whole thing to one of the older guys and he asks me if it was a red bike and if the rider was tall and thin. Well I say _yeah, that’s right, you know the man?_ And he says _Not a man, boy. Name’s Sherlock Holmes and from now on you ignore him.”_

 _Oh God. Sherlock on a motorcycle,_ John thinks. And then abruptly stops that train of thought. Lestrade continues.

“Anyway so I ask my training officer about him the next day. He tells me about Sherlock’s family then—you know about his family?”

John nods. _Unfortunately._

“Right. So for the next few weeks I sit at that damn corner all night, and every night he comes blazing by right around 2AM and I can’t do anything but watch his taillight disappear.”

Greg shakes his head, taking several swallows of beer. “Well one night he doesn’t show and I figure that’s pretty weird, so I keep an eye out as I head back to the station, and sure enough a few miles away there’s a bike all kinds of tore up on the side of the road and a boy who looks barely sixteen years old sitting next to it. I stop and ask him what happened and if he’s hurt and can I call someone for him and he tells me to kindly fuck off, bold as can be, as if he’d crashed the thing on purpose.”

“Sounds about right,” John mutters, smiling despite himself.

Greg laughs. “Well anyway a few minutes later Mycroft shows up—you know Mycroft?”

“Yes,” John says.

Greg makes a face John can’t decipher and takes another gulp of beer before continuing. “Anyway, Mycroft shows up and hands Sherlock a backpack and acts like he’s about to drive off again. Well I ask him where he’s going and why he isn’t taking the boy with him and Mycroft says Sherlock doesn’t do cars and drives off. So I’m pretty lost at that point and I realize Sherlock’s started walking off down the road in the opposite direction and I run to catch up and ask him if I can give him a ride etc. but he just shakes his head and keeps going and eventually I give up and head back to my car. The next day I wake up to a text message from a number I’ve never seen before saying he wants to talk to me and to come by his house when I get off work. I do, because, I mean, I have no idea how he got my number and I’m just about dying of curiosity, and he says he’d like to make a business arrangement.”

“A business arrangement?”John repeats.

“Yep. He said if I’d give him access to cold cases he’d help me make detective in two years. I thought he was messing with me at first but, well, you know how he is, I figured out pretty fast he wasn’t just some kid taking the piss.”

Greg paused, clearly editing out what he thought were unimportant details. “Anyway. I gave him cold cases, he solved them, I got the credit. I made detective. Youngest on the force ever.” He shrugs. “We’re not friends in his mind, just co-workers. He still asks for old cases every now and then, helps me out if I get stuck on current ones. I…I get the feeling I care more about him than he does for me. I don’t know. He’s like this really obnoxious self-destructive kid brother. I can’t turn him in for the drugs, because I know prison would absolutely ruin someone like him. But I can’t just ignore it either. So I keep tabs on him as best I can. He doesn’t particularly like it.”

John takes a moment to absorb the other man’s story, finishing his beer.

“So what’s with the car thing?” he asks finally. “You said he doesn’t do cars now. He refuses to ride in them. Why?”

Greg’s response is slow, nearly regretful. “His parents.”

“What about them? Do they not do cars anymore?”

“No,” Greg sighs, “They died in one.”

“His parents are _dead_?” he repeats, suddenly recalling Mycroft’s stilted words: _A lot can happen in five years, John._

Greg nods.

“Shit. What happened?”

“Accident,” the other man answers, picking up his beer. “Terrible car accident.”

“Regardless,” John murmurs, running a hand through his hair, “It’s still a safer method of transportation than a motorcycle. I’d think someone like Sherlock would realize that.”

Greg shakes his head. “You don’t understand. He was there.”

“What?”

The detective inspector leans back against John’s couch, crossing his arms over his stomach. “Sherlock was there. The night they died. He was in the back seat, his father was driving. They were on their way back into London from the country and the car was hit head on. It was late, no one was there to see it or call for help. The other driver was killed instantly. Sherlock was pinned, conscious, but couldn’t move. He was stuck for three hours before someone came down the road and called paramedics.”

_Well shit._

John doesn’t want to ask, but he does anyway. “His parents. Were they killed on impact?”

John already knows what the answer is from the expression on Greg’s face.

“No. I looked up the police report. I know I shouldn’t have but…” he shrugs to excuse his actions. “According to the officer in charge his father was alert and talking to him for nearly an hour after the collision but he had several injuries to his upper torso. By the time paramedics arrived he’d lost too much blood to be saved.”

“So Sherlock watched his father die then.”

“Yes,” Greg says, draining his beer.

“And now he doesn’t do cars.”

“Now he doesn’t do cars,” he agrees.

John realizes he’s been pulling hard at his necklace and lets go, pressing his palms together. Something occurs to him and the thought forces a sharp breath out of his lungs and into his mouth; he doesn’t let it out, hot air trapped between his tongue and his teeth. His stomach becomes a pocket of ice inside his ribs.

“What day was it, that the accident happened?” he asks.

“Around six years ago, in 2008,” Greg says, “Er—June 22nd, I think. Why?”

“Fuck,” John answers, because it’s the only coherent response he can produce.

June 22nd, 2008. The day before Sherlock had sent him the damn email that ruined everything.

“Fuck,” he says again, and pushes his hands into his hair. “I need another beer.”

***

Sherlock sits on the floor of John’s bedroom, one temple leaned to the molding of the half-closed door. He shuts his eyes against the throb of blood in his ears, licks his cracked lips, and listens as Lestrade gives a stumbled explanation of The Accident. He’d woken some time before when Greg had arrived and he’d attempted to move to the living room. But the walls had shifted when he stood and he’d had to make do with crawling. When he’d heard them talking about him he paused, and that pause had stretched for raw minutes as secrets were aired and death was recounted and John swore in a way that was so painfully familiar it made his chest constrict.

He remembered what it was like; to _feel_ that much that quickly. To realize that the only thing worse than the sensation itself was knowing it could happen again; amplified. It was the kind of ache that sat heavy and painful in the back of his teeth, the kind that clenched his throat, and made it hard to breathe. He never wanted to feel that way again.

Sherlock recalled the hours of waiting in a mangled collage of metal and leather; slow words through his bloodied lips and slower responses from the driver’s seat. He remembered the pinch and the burn as he dislocated his right knee in a last violent effort to reach his father when he’d stopped answering Sherlock altogether. He remembered the silence afterward. Silence save for his own breathing and cicadas. He remembered daylight, hours after the paramedics had taken his away, when his body was aching and heavy beneath medication, when Mycroft had arrived at the hospital with dark eyes and shaking hands and a laptop. Because at that point Mycroft knew that was the only consolation he was allowed to give.

Naturally there’d been an email waiting in Sherlock’s inbox from John; the one person whose death would wring the most emotion from him, a feat he didn’t even want to consider after the events of the previous day.

But he had to, because the email was completely typical, a hastily written, improperly punctuated letter that talked about desert and heat and artillery, who’s sender had attached a smiling picture of his wind-chapped face—teeth white against the dark of his skin. He had been holding his gun in one hand, so casual it hurt, and in the other was a massive spider—dead. John had ended the email with a snarky post script about trying to send the giant arachnid to Sherlock as a gift for experimentation but that his commander had found him trying to stuff the carcass in a shipping envelope and had been less than pleased. He’d signed the email _love John_ which wasn’t particularly special; he signed every email that way. But that day it was too much.

Sherlock had thrown the laptop halfway across the room, screamed at Mycroft when he tried to touch him and eventually had to be sedated. When he was next coherent, some hours later, he borrowed his brother’s blackberry to compose a response to John’s email. The final, cruel response that would guarantee the end of communication.

He should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it.

John didn’t believe him at first. He sent a confused reply, then an angry one. He called him, leaving staticy voice messages with rough tones and excessive profanity. He even contacted Mycroft, though what their exact conversation had been Mycroft would never tell him. Finally, after nearly six months had passed Sherlock received one final message. _I give up._ And apparently he had.

Sherlock listens as Lestrade makes his excuses in the living room, realizing John is having some sort of epiphany and probably wants to be alone. As Greg stands to leave, he asks if John wants him to take Sherlock off his hands.

_No. Please say no._

“No,” John answers sharply. “Let him sleep. I’ll take care of him.”

Sherlock allows his head to fall to one shoulder in relief, trying to wet his lips again, but his whole mouth has gone dry. _Side effect of the heroin_ , his mind provides helpfully. _You’re probably also dehydrated._

He waits until Lestrade is gone and then tries to stand again, using the wall for support.

“John?”

His voice is weak. So is his mind for that matter. Usually it’s nice, to not be able to think in straight lines and quick bursts of color but at the moment he wants to make sense of things, and his brain stumbling about in muddled, drug-induced circles is not at all helpful.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them again John is in front of him.

“Sherlock.”

John’s face is no longer guarded ( _Good_ ) and the conflict of emotion represented there is immensely interesting.

_Worry. Anger. Confusion. Guilt?_

“Hey,” John tucks two fingers beneath Sherlock’s jaw, checking his pulse, and then tips his chin toward the light, studying his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” he answers truthfully, then nods toward the hall. “Bathroom.”

John watches him walk, one hand hovering at his lower back, and doesn’t make the slightest attempt to hide his consternation.

“You’re an idiot,” John informs him, leaning against the outside of the bathroom door.

“I’m a certified genius,” Sherlock answers roughly from inside.

Flushing the toilet takes an embarrassing amount of concentration, as does buttoning his trousers. Turning on the sink, however, requires more coordination than he can muster.

“John,” Sherlock says resignedly, and John is beside him again a moment later.

“Need help?” John asks, as if that’s perfectly ordinary and nothing to be ashamed of.

“Yes.”

John nods for him to sit on the edge of the bathtub and wets a flannel. He cleans Sherlock’s face first, and then moves down to his neck, wiping away the itch of dried sweat from his skin. He stands, wets the cloth again, and works his way down Sherlock’s arms, pausing to take special care of the inside of his elbow.

“Please tell me you always use clean needles,” John whispers.

“Of course, I’m not stupid.”

John laughs in a dark sort of way that means he doesn’t agree.

It is silent for several minutes before John’s progress pauses at Sherlock’s fingers.

“There’s dried blood under your nails.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, closing his eyes. His full attention is claimed by remaining upright. He feels dangerously vulnerable without a wall to lean back against.

“May I ask whose blood it is?” John says, starting to scrub at his cuticles.

Sherlock tells him because his head hurts.

“You remember in the hospital, the second conversation you heard, when Lestrade took me through the crime scene of the murdered diplomat?”

“Yeah, you mean the guy found at your friend’s hotel? The friend of yours who’d gone missing.”

“Not friend,” he corrects, “Colleague. His name was Victor Trevor.”

“Was?” John repeats.

“I spent most of the last six months trying to find him. I did yesterday. A few minutes too late to do any good.”

“So it’s his blood?” John clarifies, carefully cleaning around the edge of a thumbnail.

“Yes. I attempted CPR when we found him, though it was probably a pointless endeavor from the start. There was a lot a blood.”

John’s hands have stopped moving. Now they are just holding Sherlock’s. Sherlock opens his eyes to find John staring at him.

“Is that why you did this?”

“Did what?” he asks, just to be contrary.

John moves his left hand, thumb against the fresh bruised injection site at the inside of Sherlock’s elbow.

“This,” he says, pressing hard enough to hurt. “You were grieving, and this is the only way you know how to cope, right?”

 _Yes_ , Sherlock thinks. “No,” he answers.

John sighs, standing, and throws the rag into the sink. “Come on.”

He beckons for Sherlock to follow him, then wraps an arm around Sherlock’s waist when it becomes clear he can’t. John is careful not to look at him as they move slowly to the couch, where John settles him with a glass of water and a piece of toast.

He drinks the water and ignores the toast and waits for the inevitable question.

Eventually John clears a spot on the coffee table, sits down on it so he’s facing Sherlock, and locks his fingers together in a white-knuckled embrace. His throat works for several seconds before he can form the words.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It comes out more resigned than angry. “About your parents.”

Sherlock remembers the blackberry in his hand. The sharp keystrokes as he composed the three terrible lines. The way his thumb was reluctant to press send but did it anyway.

“It wasn’t significant. We were never particularly close. You know that.”

“They were your _parents_. Even if they were shitty at it. You don’t just watch your father die and walk away from it.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Sherlock says, trying to sound aloof and utterly failing. “You were thousands of miles away.”

“Still,” John shifts, as if he wants to reach for him, and the hold Sherlock has on his own fingers tightens. “I could have been there for you in other ways. I mean. I wouldn’t have known what to say and I probably would have gone about trying to comfort you all wrong. But if you’d told me, I could have tried to help, at least let you know I cared. You wouldn’t have been so alone, that way.”

“You had more important things to worry about.”

“No,” John’s voice goes sharp and it surprises Sherlock into looking at him. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you try to pretend it was for my benefit, like you were some sort of martyr, worried about my feelings. You _destroyed_ me. You were my only friend. The only thing close to family I had left and you knew it. Don’t _even_.”

Sherlock drops his eyes to his hands. He takes a drink of water to postpone speaking

John’s tone gentles. “So why then? Please, I’m trying to understand.”

“It was awful.”

“What?”

“ _Caring_.”

John snorts and it’s annoying enough that he raises his voice out of a whisper. “It hurt,” Sherlock says, wincing as the words form roughly in the back of his throat. “Nothing had ever hurt like that before. And it was terrible. Feeling like that. Feeling _at all_. And then, the next day I got an email from you, the one with that picture of the spider.”

The side of John’s lip quirks, remembering, but the majority of his face stays furious.

“And I realized that I had to be rid of you before _you_ could leave _me_ , intentionally or otherwise.”

John’s face is doing a funny thing, Sherlock can’t tell if he’s going to laugh or shout at him. He does neither, eventually rubbing both palms into his eyes, and then down his cheeks.

“You realize that’s incredibly stupid, right?” John says.

“It worked,” Sherlock responds sullenly. “Mostly.”

“You kept the necklace,” John retorts and Sherlock winces before he can stop himself.

“You kept yours,” he answers, “You still _wear_ yours.”

John’s voice drops. His fingers tighten. “I promised you I would.”

It’s silent for several seconds and Sherlock takes another drink of water, waiting for John to speak again.

“Why _did_ you keep yours?” John asks. “It doesn’t make sense.”

_Because I tried to throw it away and couldn’t. Because I’d never had a friend before and knew I probably wouldn’t ever have one again and couldn’t stand the idea of no longer having proof it happened. Because it was the only piece of you I was allowed to keep._

“Because it’s _mine_ ,” he answers.

“Sentiment,” John says teasingly.

 _I know_ , Sherlock thinks.

Neither of them says anything for several seconds.

“Did you mean it?” John asks, “What you said in that email, about…?”

Sherlock looks down. “About you not being useful to me anymore?”

He can tell John winces from the sudden tension in the other man’s hands and Sherlock is glad he had the forethought to look away from John’s face.

“Ah, yes. That,” John agrees.

_Of course I didn’t mean it, what a stupid question._

“No.”

“Alright,” John says. “Good. Ok.”

John sighs, resting his weight on his elbows, letting his head hang for a moment. When he stands his face is still wrong, but it’s not as bad as before.

“Eat your toast,” John says, moving to refill his water. “Let’s see if there’s a nature program on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. There's a bit of backstory. And Lestrade. And some feelings. Hope you like it!


	10. Chapter 10

“What are you thinking about?”

Its dusk and John has traded studying his textbook for studying Sherlock. He’s spent the last several hours motionless on the couch, clearly not paying attention to the television, which is currently discussing the sex lives of hyenas in frankly appalling detail. Sherlock has shown no interest in moving, much less leaving, and his expression has become progressively more violent as the evening wore on.

John can’t decide how he feels. Looking at Sherlock, curled beside him on the couch in a position they have shared countless times…it makes his stomach hurt. Even knowing what he does now, he doesn’t think he can forgive him. Doesn’t even know if the Sherlock he remembers is still in there, somewhere. Regardless, sitting next to Sherlock, listening to him breathe. It’s nice. Better than nice. It’s—god he’s been missing this for nearly six years. If he wasn’t still so furious he’d probably be euphoric.

“Sherlock,” John says louder, and Sherlock glances sideways at him. “Hm?”

“What are you thinking about?” John repeats.

“Shakespeare,” Sherlock answers promptly, as if that’s the obvious, standard answer.

Well, John supposes that, for Sherlock, it might be.

“Oh?” He says.

“I am a Jew,” Sherlock quotes, “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter  
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us…” his tone changes minutely, “do we not revenge?”

John thinks for a minute, remembering the same lines from the same mouth years before. “The Merchant of Venice?”

Sherlock gives John a brief pleased look. “Yes.”

“Feeling vengeful are we?”

“Yes.”

John considers the ugly look on his face. “This is about your friend Victor then?”

“Colleague,” Sherlock corrects, but the revision lacks resolve.

“You were close, though,” John presses, and then, seeing his expression, amends, “well, close by your standards.”

Sherlock’s answer is slow, drawn out over two syllables, but honest. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“An apology from you is pointless.”

“I know, Sherlock. But still. If you want to talk about—“

Sherlock straightens. His eyes narrow. “If you’re suggesting I discuss my feelings on the matter I’ll leave right now.”

“Please, I know better than that. I was going to ask if you wanted to talk about the circumstances surrounding his death. The case. What happened with your Hungarian diplomat and such.”

“Why would I want to discuss the case with you?”

John suddenly feels embarrassed for suggesting it. “Dunno. Fresh outlook?”

“You think you’ll notice something I haven’t?” The distain in his voice is not only obvious, but overwhelming.

John’s fingers curl against his knees, digging into denim. “Despite what you think, I’m not completely useless when it comes to espionage. If you’ll remember, I was special ops for a year and a half in Afghanistan.”

“You got shot,” Sherlock snaps, “Clearly you weren’t very good.”

John’s physical response is muted, a slight wince, a blink that lasts a second too long.

“Right,” he answers, the word coming out more breathless than he intended. “Never mind then.”

Sherlock goes still, eyes caught on John’s. His lips thin and John recognizes the expression. It’s the look Sherlock gets when he’s mentally reprimanding herself.

“I apologize,” Sherlock murmurs after a beat of silence. “That was uncalled for.”

“Case?” John prompts.

Sherlock sighs and holds out one hand. “Laptop.”

“Laptop?” John repeats.

Sherlock closes his eyes as if John is being purposely difficult.

“I’ll pull up the files for you,” Sherlock says, fingers wiggling.

John realizes this is probably a terrible idea, the fact that it’s illegal ranking low on the list of reasons why. He hands it over anyway.

“I can’t access forensics from here, just the main case files. But I’ve got everything on a wall in my flat if you’d like to see it sometime.”

“A wall,” John says.

Sherlock gives him a sideways look, fingers tapping away at the keyboard. “Can you stop repeating things? It’s annoying.”

John resists the urge to throw back his head and groan. He would probably be reprimanded for that too.

“Here,” Sherlock slides his laptop onto his knees, shifting minutely closer with the movement. “This was the first one.”

“Istvan Balco,” John reads, studying the picture at the top of the page. “Fifty-three. Hungarian. Visa. Found in Victor Trevor’s hotel room. He was your diplomat, the one with Burgers Disease?”

“Yes.”

“And he left you a clue in the receipt,” he murmurs, scrolling through the file. “That led you to—“

Sherlock leans over, and with a quick keystroke brings up a second file. “Tibor Henerisc. Istvan’s cousin.”

The men are very similar in facial structure, John notices. “Tibor Henerisc,” he reads, “Fifty-one. The only independent elected to Hungarian Parliament last year. So you were right about the clue then?”

“No.”

That causes John to pause. “No?”

Sherlock curls his fingers, bringing one fist to his mouth. His teeth tug distractedly at a thumbnail. “I thought Henerisc was leaving us a clue as to who his murderer was. I was wrong.”

“How?”

He closes his eyes. “You’ll see.”

John returns his attention to the computer screen and continues reading, summarizing as he goes.

“Alright. Tibor Henerisc. He went missing the same day his cousin was found in Victor’s hotel room. Three months later he was found dead—“

“Wait.”

John pauses, glancing sideways at Sherlock. “This might get confusing, let me just—“ he gestures for a moment and then sighs.

“A week after Balco was found in Victor’s apartment and both Victor and Henerisc were declared missing, there was an email sent to Victor’s email account. I’d been monitoring it since his disappearance. The email contained a series of numbers, latitude and longitude of an apartment in Virginia Beach. It was sent from the account of a fourteen year old boy in Wisconsin. An easy hack. His password was “kittens’.”

John tries not to laugh at the look of distain that accompanies the word.

“I flew in that night and found the next victim.” Three keystrokes and yet another file is added to the top of the queue onscreen.

“Clause Vernon,” John reads, “English. Retired to the US six months before. Sixty-three.”

“Bastard.” Sherlock mutters, more to himself than John.

“Oh?” John raises an eyebrow. “I take it you knew him?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

John’s voice changes, forming his name as a scold out of habit. “Sherlock.”

He realizes what he’s done a second too late, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to notice.

“He was my doctor.” Sherlock says, teeth finding the cuticle of his thumb again.

“Doctor?” John scans the file. “It says here he was a psychiatrist.”

“Yes. Fine.” Sherlock’s words have gone sharp at the edges. “He was my psychiatrist.”

John scoffs. “You hate psychiatrists. You stopped going the moment you turned thirteen and your parents didn’t have the energy to force you into it anymore.”

“Yes.” Sherlock agrees.

John taps his fingers against the touchpad of the laptop. The nervous movement causes the current window to minimize and it takes him a moment to open it again. “So when were you under Clause Vernon’s care?”

Sherlock curls his lip at the word care. “Three months when I was seventeen. October, November, December. An hour a day.”

“Well he must have been something if he could keep _you_ in a room for an hour a day,” he says lightly.

“I didn’t have a choice. It was a locked room.”

John stills. “What?”

“I made some unwise choices that year,” Sherlock murmurs. His eyes find John’s. The hard line of Sherlock’s mouth dares him to ask further questions.

“Alright. Okay.”

John swallows and scrolls through the psychologist’s file. “So he was found shot in the head, same caliber weapon as Balco, same presentation but without the cigarette.”

“Yes.”

“And the clue this time was…” John pauses to make sure he’s reading correctly. “A takeout menu?”

“Not just any takeout menu. Angelo’s. An Italian restaurant down the street from my flat. I eat dinner there every Friday night if I’m in town. And somehow one of their menus ended up in Virginia Beach in the apartment of a dead man who used to be my shrink.”

“Ok. So where did that clue lead?”

Sherlock makes no movement for several seconds, then leans over to open another file. Their knees collide but he doesn’t seem to notice. He retreats to his previous position a moment later, fingers curled, teeth against thumb.

“Frank O’Malley,” John reads, then winces at the grinning drivers license picture of a teenage kid. “Irish. Nineteen. Worked at Angelo’s as a bus boy, as well as the arcade next door. Found dead in his home a week after Vernon. Same weapon as the prior two. With…a ticket to the Symphony at the Met in his jacket pocket.” John re-reads that line before glancing up at Sherlock. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Exactly,” Sherlock says. “Obviously left by the killer.”

“So you flew to New York,” John prompts.

“And we’re back where we started. Pull up Henersic’s file again.”

It takes him a moment to find the right tab. “Oh, right, Henersic was found dead three months after he went missing. He was found backstage at the Met during a symphony performance. Same caliber weapon as the prior three. Same presentation. Shit.”

John’s attention moves from the black-type, dry, emotionless observations to Sherlock’s face, carefully blank, but still somehow tragic in the blue light from the screen.

“The killer was leaving the clues. Like…like a scavenger hunt. He was playing with you.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees. “After the second murder it became readily apparent I was his actual target.”

“That’s— _Why_? I mean. Are you in danger?”

Sherlock shrugs as if this is unimportant. “It’s more like he’s…showing off, than directly threatening me.”

John presses his palms into his eyes and breathes for a moment. “Alright, okay. So what happened next?”

“When Henersic was found, he was holding a cello bow. The initial forensic team had bagged it as evidence and then promptly forgotten about it after dusting for fingerprints. But I know cellos”—that was true—“and it was no ordinary bow. It was very old and, I assumed, very expensive. I did some searching backstage and found this.”

He took a moment to pull open a picture of what looked to be a very important instrument.

“It’s a cello made by Antonio Stradivari, one of only sixty that still survive. It was in a practice room turned on its side like some sort of discarded children’s instrument.”

Sherlock shudders at the thought, though John doesn’t understand why. “And this is important because…?”

“Because,” Sherlock says, the force of the word in his eyes, “That Stradivari cello’s estimated worth is seven _million_ dollars. I would _kill_ for the chance to play that instrument.”

John has the uncomfortable feeling that Sherlock is not exaggerating.

“Alright. So, continue.”

“Well, I knew then what the next clue was. Thirty-two years before the cello had disappeared when its owner, the twenty year old son of a French politician, was kidnapped from seminary. Neither had been seen since.”

“How was that the next clue?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock admits.

He considers this. “Ok. What happened next?”

“Victor,” Sherlock says distractedly, and then amends. “Trevor.”

He taps at the keys and a final window opens.

“Victor Trevor,” John reads, “Duel Citizenship. British and American. Twenty-eight. Found dead in a bedsit in Charleston six months after his initial disappearance.”

John frowns, scrolling back through the short file.

“It says cause of death was blood loss from multiple stab wounds. That doesn’t fit with the others at all.”

“I know,” Sherlock murmurs. “It’s all wrong. I don’t understand.”

“Well how did you know to look for him there? You said you were the one to find him but you got there too late.”

“There was another email sent to Victor’s account. Just an address and‘3pm. Don’t be late.’ I got there at 3:05. I was late.”

“That doesn’t make sense either, though,” John mutters, clicking back through all the open tabs. “I mean, the guy doesn’t seem like the type to use the same trick more than once. He already used Trevor’s email as a hint to find your shrink. Why would he recycle that?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock agrees. “The email wasn’t even sent from an outside party. It was internal, from his own account to himself.”

“And there wasn’t any new clue left?”

“No.”

“Well shit.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

John studies Sherlock’s profile in the computer-lit darkness: the way his fingers curl toward his mouth, the way his teeth pull at damp, already mangled skin.

“Hey, stop that,” he catches Sherlock’s wrist in a well-practiced gesture, pulling his thumb away from his face and toward his. “You’re bleeding.”

“A keen observation,” he says placidly.

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit," John mutters.

"And I suppose quoting an idiom is the highest form?" Sherlock says.

John finds himself resorting to an overused retort when it came to verbal sparring with Sherlock. “Shut up.”

The other man smiles tiredly in response.

The clock on the computer screen reads 9:42 but it feels significantly later. John shifts the laptop from his legs and half stands, half rolls, to his feet.

“I’ve got to be at the hospital early tomorrow. Can I call you a cab home or—“He winces slightly. “Sorry. Right. No cars. Uh—“

“I’ll take the tube.” Sherlock says.

“Not tonight you won’t. Doubt you’d even make it down the stairs. Take the couch.”

Sherlock touches his tongue to the bleeding cuticle of his thumb. He looks somewhat lost for a moment before saying carefully. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

John considers laughing but decides Sherlock would probably take that the wrong way. “You’re free to stay as long as you like. If you want to take a shower I can loan you some clothes.”

“Yes,” he says, “a shower would be nice.”

John finds Sherlock an old army t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that are a size too large for him. He tries not to think about the countless nights he spent with Sherlock before, when the other man’s presence was an annoyance, when the thirteen year old in his clothes would scare away John’s awkward attempts to bring dates home and keep him from sleep with screeching violin music. He remembers when Sherlock would arrive at his doorstep past midnight with grass stains on his knees and manic eyes and ask if he could stay because he couldn’t exist in his own world and needed to be in John’s for a while. And John would say yes, despite everything, because even if Sherlock was insufferable, at least he was someone who cared.

Because there were also the times when Sherlock’s presence wasn’t a trial. When John would wake up damp and nauseous from a nightmare and Sherlock wouldn’t be asleep on the floor where he left him. Sherlock would be sat in the desk chair, violin propped against his skinny shoulder, playing some soft, soul-wrenching lullaby that always, _always_ , sent John back to dreamless sleep in a way that the prescribed pills never did.

They never talked about those nights, not while they occurred, or afterward. Those dark hours were just a shared memory of aborted shouts and embarrassed looks and a blanket of kind, nearly apologetic sound. Sherlock didn’t know what to do with emotions. He’d told John so, repeatedly, but John preferred Sherlock’s way of handling his neuroses to the common majority. He remembers his mother’s wry statement on a morning that followed one such night, when gunshots echoed in his head before violin music took over. Usually his mother worked the night shift, and wasn’t privy to Sherlock’s impromptu concerts, but the previous day had been one of the rare times her off shift had coincided with a nightmare.

When John moved to fill a mug with coffee the following morning, his mother had caught his hand.

She hadn’t said anything at first, just frowned at him, and then, after the silence became uncomfortable, she sighed.

“Well. That boy may be an odd one, but the kid can certainly make some music.”

It was the closest his mother ever came to voicing approval of their strange friendship.

When Sherlock emerges from the shower, John is hit with a strange sense of dejavu.

Wet curls and bare feet make him look younger. The T-shirt, fitted on John, is baggy on Sherlock’s thin frame, but also too short, and there is a pale strip of abdomen showing between the hem and the low slung elastic waistband of the sweatpants. It takes John an embarrassing amount of time to realize he’s staring and abruptly turns around.

 John shows Sherlock where the spare blankets are and moves into the vacated bathroom for a shower of his own. A few minutes later, wearing an army shirt and boxers himself, he finds Sherlock tucked in a nest on the couch, one of the pillows from John’s bed beneath his head. John leans against the molding in the hallway, arms crossed, watching as Sherlock curls even tighter in on himself. It’s the same sleeping position he’s always had, a sharp-edged comma of limbs; the same soft exhalation of breath as he settles. The same pinched expression on his pale features, as if he is only attempting sleep because his body has betrayed him.

“Do you still play the violin?” John asks before he can stop himself.

“Yes,” Sherlock answers, offering nothing more.

“Right.” John forces himself to move into the kitchen, resisting the latent urge to touch Sherlock’s damp head as he passes the couch. “I’m just going to do the washing up and then I’m for bed. I’ll try not to be too loud.”

He doesn’t respond, but John can feel his eyes on his back as he plugs the drain and starts to fill the sink with water.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says after several minutes of silence. “For letting me stay.”

“No problem,” John answers. “I’m glad you’re here.”

And even if the exchange is a touch too grave for the situation it is no less deserved

****

 _Sometimes,_ Sherlock thinks, _looking at John is like watching a musical score in motion._

He washes dishes with a certain rough art, an efficient blur of white-rolled sleeves and damp forearms. The movement of tendons in his feet is an arpeggio; quick staccato notes as he shifts from heel to splayed toes and then back again. Allegro fades to adagio with the transfer of his weight from left to right; as bowls are rinsed and plates are stacked on the drying rack. The soft clatter of cups and cutlery, handled with fingers both capable and quick, are a progression of rough chords. And when he pauses, studying a chipped mug, the soft press of his hips to the counter is a cavatina in the interim silence.

John sighs, dries his hands on his t-shirt, and glances over his shoulder for the sixteenth time in four minutes and Sherlock pretends for the sixteenth time that he is not counting.

 _Duende,_ he thinks, _Verb. Spanish. The overwhelming physical and emotional reaction to art or music._

John’s movements are near silent, but still just as horribly effecting. Sherlock picks out violin cords on his thigh, calloused fingertips composing on cotton fabric. He tries to focus on the hum of exhaustion in the back of his mind as John moves to dry the washed dishes, throwing another furtive look in his direction.

 _Seventeen_ , Sherlock thinks. And then: _No. Stop._

It’s strange, sharing someone’s company again.Even stranger that it’s John. John is still mad at him, that much is apparent from his sharp movements and warring facial expressions. But the domesticity of the moment is strangely calming. It reminds Sherlock of the weeks spent with Victor, when they had been forced within each other’s orbits long enough to become something like friends.

He should have known better.

“Well,” John says, interrupting his thoughts, “Goodnight. Wake me up if you need me.”

Sherlock watches as John moves from the kitchen to stand beside the couch. There is a horizontal stripe of damp fabric at the bottom of his T-shirt, wet from leaning against the counter by the sink. There is look on his face Sherlock doesn’t particularly want to dwell on.

“Why would I need you?” Sherlock asks. Because he is stupid and unkind and has been purposely cruel for so long that now he isn’t sure how to stop.

“Never mind,” John says, and turns off the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some plot development. I may or may not be able to update next week as I'll be with family and am uncertain of the wifi situation. Hopefully everything works out, but, if not, you have been warned! Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

When John wakes up in the morning, Sherlock is gone. He stumbles to the window, pulling apart the curtains with unrealistic hope. He looks for a note but doesn’t find one. He stands in the kitchen for a few terrible moments, unsure of what to do, and then chastises himself for being stupid. He makes tea, doesn’t actually drink it, and leaves.

He manages to get through rounds without any obvious lapses, but by the time he and Stamford are in the cafeteria line for lunch, the other doctor is giving him sideways looks.

“Is everything alright?” Stamford asks, and John realizes he’s been staring at the Jello selection (green or orange) as if the future of modern civilization is contingent upon the decision.

“No,” John answers honestly, pushing a green one onto his tray. “Not really.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Also no.”

Stamford, being the good friend he is, drops it.

Three hours later, John is called to the nurse’s station on the first floor.

“There’s a girl here to see you,” says a harried woman when he arrives. She nods to the waiting area. “There by the window, said something about a Sherlock Holmes?”

John considers turning around and leaving again, but is too curious to actually follow through with the irritated impulse.

The girl by the window is little more than a child. She’s Asian, small and lean, and wearing clothes several sizes too big, which makes it difficult to tell exactly how old she is; probably middle-teens. She’s got more piercings than John can count, and an un-gelled Mohawk hanging into her eyes. The tips of lank hair are red.

“You John?” The kid asks, arms crossed over her skinny chest.

“Yes.”

“You got a minute?”

He considers utilizing sarcasm with his response, but decides taking his frustration out on Sherlock’s minion would probably be less than fair.

“Not really.”

He sits down anyway and gestures for the girl to do the same.

She moves with an odd sort of nervous grace, tucking one leg under herself in the seat, the ball of her opposite foot braced on the ground. Her fingers move against the torn knees of her jeans, and her eyes shift with the same restless intensity. Her whole posture screams discomfort.

“Are you alright?” John asks.

The girl’s responding flinch is badly masked. “Sorry,” she says, “I’m not a fan of hospitals. I wanted to talk to you about Sherlock.”

“I figured. You have a name?”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I’m Sam.”

“And you know Sherlock how?”

“I do things for him. He pays me with food. Let’s me sleep on his lilo when it’s cold.” She lifts one shoulder and drops it, looking uncomfortable and John realizes abruptly that Sam is homeless.

“How old are you?” He asks.

“Eighteen,” she says in a way that makes John think she’s lying.

“Right.” John pinches the bridge of his nose. “And Sherlock sent you to speak to me?”

“Not exactly. I just—I talked to Inspector Lestrade this morning. I—he checks in on me every now and than. Asks how Sherlock’s doing. Sometimes he buys me lunch.”

“I understand.”

“Right. Anyway,” Sam continues, “I know this must be sort of insane for you right now. I don’t—I’m not one-hundred percent on your whole story with Sherlock, he’s not exactly a fan of—uh, but I get that you’ve got some history and I just wanted to ask you not to give up on him.”

Sam’s words start out slow, hesitant, then speed up so that they’re practically colliding.

“I mean. He’s got people who care about him. Really care about him. Mycroft, Lestrade, Victor, Dimmock and I, we’ve all tried and failed to get through to him and he’s—well he’s sort of impossible. But you’re different. Or he sees you differently. Or something. I mean, he’s got that stupid necklace with your name on it and a picture of you inside his violin case and I just…don’t give up on him, please. Just. Don’t.”

Sam takes a slow breath, eyes trained on her knees. She rubs her palms harder. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m not so good with the talking stuff.”

John resists the urge to walk to the nearest wall and then proceed to bang his head against it until he passes out from blunt trauma.

He runs his fingers through his hair instead. “Sherlock has a picture of me in his violin case?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, finally looking up at him. “It’s of both of you, actually. Asleep. Sort of, you know,” she gestures with an awkward hand, “cuddled together I guess. Its…well its actually pretty damn cute.”

John smiles despite himself before common sense demands he return to reason.

“I remember,” he says, knowing his tone is still too fond by half. “Mycroft took it. Sherlock woke up when the flash went off. I thought he was going to kill him.”

“Sounds about right,” Sam agrees, returning John’s wry grin with a tentative smile of her own.Her expression sobers after a moment though. “Anyway. I’ve got to go. I just wanted to say…well I’m not even sure what I meant to say but hopefully I—“

She catches John’s amused look and sighs. “Right. See? Me and talking is no. I’ll just—“ she stands, shaking her head. “See you around.”

The girl takes two steps forward, then pauses, pivoting on the heels of her converse sneakers. “Hey John?”

“Yeah?”

“Sherlock pretty much hates contemporary music, you know?”

“I’m aware,” John agrees.

“Well, he’s just spent the last four hours playing The Clash songs. Like, really excellent totally gorgeous violin versions of The Clash songs. Does that mean anything to you?”

John laughs before he can stop himself.

“Yes, actually, it does.”

Sam considers his expression, and then nods once. “Cool. Alright. Later.”

John watches the kid leave, somewhat bemused, and then returns to his duties, absentminded and oddly unsettled for the remainder of the afternoon.

He keeps thinking about the picture; a photograph he’d never actually seen but knew existed in theory. It had been taken the day before he left for what was meant to be a year-long deployment. He’d spent the preceding week with Sherlock in Mycroft’s mansion of a town home, the seven days a too-quick collage of violin music and chess games and a truly surprising amount of physical contact. Sherlock had never liked being touched. It wasn’t something they talked about, but over the years they had come to an unspoken agreement that Sherlock’s rules for other people did not apply to John, mostly because in their relationship’s inception he’d kept forgetting and eventually Sherlock had stopped correcting the errant brushes of skin. But it was still surprising that afternoon when Sherlock set aside his violin and crawled onto the bed where John had been sprawled out, eyes closed, listening. Sherlock tucked himself into the space between John’s outstretched arm and his hip, the knobs of Sherlock’s spine pressing into John’s ribs, and let out the kind of sigh that usually spoke of sadness in normal people.

“Problem?” John asked, yawning.

Sherlock didn’t respond for several minutes, long enough for John to find himself nearly asleep when Sherlock finally whispered, “I don’t want you to leave.”

It was the first time Sherlock addressed John’s impending deployment directly. The night John had called, three months before, to inform Sherlock of it, Sherlock had merely asked how much time John had, demanded he spend the week prior to leaving with him, and then never spoke of it again.

Emotions, particularly talking about emotions, wasn’t something either of them did well. So when Sherlock made the whispered admission, John responded with a half-turn of his body, curling around Sherlock in a way that was usually only reserved for the rare brutal nights when one or both of them had a nightmare that necessitated the presence of the other, regardless of time or engagements the following morning. Those nights, equally un-talked about in the daylight, were few and far between. But they allowed it that day, despite the fact that the sun was tipping full through the window and there had been no reason or logic to excuse the gesture.

Neither of them said anything more, and John had woken two hours later to the flash of a camera and a truly terrifying screech of fury from Sherlock as Mycroft ran from the room, giggling in a way that was completely unsuitable for a grown man with a genius-level IQ and a frankly frightening amount of political power.John had thought about the moment several times while deployed, absently wondering if Mycroft had managed to develop the picture or if Sherlock had found some way to delete the undeniable evidence that he was, indeed, occasionally human. Of course after that damning email John decided Sherlock wasn’t human after all and left off all thoughts of said photograph. He supposes he needs to reconsider that now.

An hour before his shift ends John gets a text message from a blocked number.

_221b Baker Street. 8pm—SH_

Usually the official end of John’s shift is in no way close to the actual time he heads home, but today he is on the sidewalk the moment the clock reads 7:30pm. Fifteen minutes later he’s standing in front of a door, wondering if he should waste another ten minutes in the café downstaris in order to not seem quite so eager, when the decision is taken from him.

“Oh, hello, dear.”

An older woman, dressed in a rather obnoxious shade of purple, opens the door, then ushers him inside. “I was just nipping out to the shops, you’re here to see Sherlock though, aren’t you?”

“Er—yes. Sorry, who are you?”

“Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock yells from somewhere upstairs. “Where have you put my skull?!”

“His—what?”

The woman, apparently Mrs. Hudson, sighs. “Dreadful thing. Stares at me when I do the dusting.” She flaps her hands toward the staircase. “You go on up, dear. Should warn you though, he’s been in a mood all day.”

“Right. Thank you?”

“Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock yells again. “John should be here in ten minutes and we could do with some tea!”

“Not your housekeeper!” She calls back, and then, softer, to John. “It was lovely to meet you, dear.”

John gives up and goes upstairs.

The flat is…very Sherlock. Essentially just an updated version of his childhood room.

There’s something bubbling on the stove that, judging by smell, is assuredly not edible, the kitchen counters are cluttered with lab equipment, and the bookcases in the living area are so crowded with books John fears for the structural integrity of the shelves. There’s a spray painted yellow smiley face on a wall that looks as if it’s been— _are those bullet holes?_

Sherlock, dressed in perfectly tailored slacks and a button-down, rolled at the sleeves, stands to one side, watching as John studies his home, looking oddly uncomfortable.

“Do you like it?” he asks, and the fact that Sherlock is actually asking John’s opinion about something is nearly dumbfounding.

“It’s perfect, Sherlock,” he says, and is rewarded with a pleased expression.

It’s not a smile, not quite, but it has the potential to be.

He considers the one empty wall, nearly covered in pinned pictures and papers and bits of different colored string connecting said papers and pictures.

John nods to the space, trying not to laugh. “I thought people only did this in movies.”

“No,” Sherlock answers simply, and John does laugh then.

“So. I got your text message. I’m here. Did you need something in particular?”

“No,” he repeats. “But Sam implied that you may be uncertain of my intention to remain in contact. She suggested that I reinforce my position with an invitation to dinner.”

“English, Sherlock,” John says, and is pleased to get a real smile in return.

“I wanted to see you,” Sherlock says, “I ordered takeout. Sam will be joining us shortly.”

John just grins stupidly at him for a moment and then takes a cautious step forward, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. He still sort of wants to punch him but…

“Would it be alright if I hugged you?”

Sherlock’s expression shifts, no longer open or friendly and John mentally reprimands himself, retreating to his previous position.

“Never mind. Sorry. Stupid question.”

“No it’s—that’s fine.”

Sherlock moves, the shiny tips of his shoes stopping toe to toe with John’s scuffed boots and he glances down at John then, shoulders hunched, looking exceptionally small for someone who is essentially towering over him. For some reason that alone makes it incredibly easy for John to close the distance between them, wrap one arm around his shoulders, and catch the back of Sherlock’s neck in his other hand.

John realizes after a moment that he’s probably crushing him, but Sherlock makes no protest, hooking his fingers into the fabric of John’s jacket, breathing evenly against his neck.

And then someone is knocking on the door.

For a moment John is lost.There is a tumult of movement in which he suddenly finds his arms empty, and Sherlock is against the wall with a gun— _a gun_! Where did that even _come from_?—with his eye pressed to the peep-hole, trying to catch sight of the person knocking.

He must recognize whoever it is because he takes a sudden stumbled step back, tucking the firearm into the back of his trousers, _had it been there the whole time?_ And throws open the door in a frenzied movement.

For a second, nobody moves.

The man outside is tall. Taller even than Sherlock. He has dark olive skin, and short black hair. His jeans are worn. His smile is apologetic.

“Hey, kid,” the man says and steps inside, pulling the door out of Sherlock’s unresisting hands.

“Victor,” Sherlock says.

He takes another step back and runs into the wall.

His face is a mix of so many emotions John can’t parse any of them individually.

“Hey, kid,” the man says again. “You miss me?”

“Victor _Trevor_?” John asks.

Seeing them next to each other, John finds the similarities in them somewhat unnerving. Despite the lack of actual physical resemblance, they have the same sort of muted severity about their features, the same latent violence in their postures, the same obnoxious ethereal beauty.

“Victor Trevor,” the man says easily, “that’s me.”

“You’re alive?” John says.

“Obvious,” Sherlock murmurs, but is has none of his usual scorn behind it.

“How?” Sherlock says sharply, pushing off the wall with his shoulders. “The blood was yours. I checked. And –wait.” He holds up a hurried hand as Victor’s mouth opens. “Let me. You planned it. The blood matched because it was yours. Collected beforehand over a period of days.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

“You can hold your breath for four minutes…long enough to fool me. I hope I didn’t crack any of your ribs, I got rather rough with my CPR.”

Victor winces, rubbing a hand over his chest. “That you did. Though I certainly appreciate the effort had I actually needed lifesaving measures.”

“ _Why_ though?” Sherlock says, and his expression is something John has never seen before.

“There’s the rub,” Victor murmurs. “That’s what I’m here to discuss. We’ve got a lot to cover and not much time to do it in. You got any plans tonight?”

“Apparently they’re changing. Sit. Explain.”

Victor moves toward the sofa, nodding toward John.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new partner?”

“He’s not my partner,” Sherlock says absently, dropping to sit cross-legged on the coffee table.

“Well who’s he with?” Victor asks.

“No one.”

Victor straightens, nearly stands again. “Fuck. What’s a civilian doing here, Sherlock? I thought—“

“Don’t be dramatic. This is John.”

“Uh. Hi,” says John.

“John,” Victor repeats. “ _The_ John?”

“I don’t…are there others?” John asks.

The man gives him an evaluating look, lips pursed. “He seems stupider than you described him,”

“ _Hey_ ,” John says.

“Enough,” Sherlock snaps. “I do not associate with stupid people. You know that. Now talk.”

“Fine.”

Victor settles himself more comfortably, giving John a raised-eyebrow look that seems to imply he still thinks John is an idiot.

“I was taken by a man named Sebastian Moran. He kept me in a warehouse by the docks for a few weeks then took me to a flat on the east side. I could hear the 2am train from wherever it was. He treated me well enough, said he was holding me for a friend of his. When he moved me the third time I escaped. I’d been pretending to be ill for nearly a week before. He became complacent, left his gun on the center console of the car while handcuffing me in the backseat. Oversight on his part, really.”

Victor’s story is interrupted by the door being opened, and a moment later both Victor and Sherlock are standing, guns— _guns? Did everyone in their world keep firearms in their pants?_ — pointed at an annoyed looking Sam, who’s arms are laden with shopping bags.

“Really, Sherlock? Again with the gun, you really think a bad guy will have a chat with Mrs. Hudson and then come banging up the _holy shit_ —“

She catches sight of Victor and drops one of the bags.

“Victor? _Dude_. You’re supposed to be _dead._ What the _actual_ _fuck_.”

“Hey Sam,” Victor says, moving forward to help her retrieve the strewn groceries. “Sorry. We’re a bit on edge this evening.”

“No kidding.” The kid drops to her knees, gathering rolling fruit. “Good lord,” she mutters to herself, shoving apples into plastic. “What is my _life_?”

“Anyway,” Victor says, moving toward the refrigerator with a bag of cold items. “Once I took care of Moran I started making plans for my untimely demise. I don’t know exactly what Moran’s friend intended to do with me, but I know my death was supposed to be part of some sort of puzzle. I assume the puzzle was for you?”

Sherlock nods and Victor continues, rearranging specimen jars to make a gallon of milk fit in the refrigerator.

“I knew it would throw off whatever his plans were if I turned up dead. I needed him to think there were other things at play. I needed it to be believable. And having you be the one to find me made it believable. Sorry about that, by the way.”

He returns to the living area, sitting down on the chair in front of Sherlock. Their knees touch. John doesn’t like it.

“They had access to CCTV, I got that from Moran’s conversations with whoever was in charge. I found a bedsit with a front entrance in perfect view, glass door, so you could see inside the entryway from the street. They’ll have seen the footage by now.”

“So you went stumbling out, bleeding, collapsed in the front hall. I arrived, assured anyone watching you were dying, and then what?”

“Once Lestrade hauled you off of me I made sure he was blocking the camera angle and winked at him. He took it from there.”

“Lestrade _knew_?”

Sherlock’s face, which up until this point has been relatively blank, is suddenly murderous.

“ _He_ knew but I couldn’t? Why didn’t you wink at _me_?”

Victor sighs, rolling his knuckles against his thighs. “I couldn’t be certain of your response. I was afraid you might—“

“What? _Give you away_? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Sherlock. You were…relatively upset. I couldn’t be sure.”

“I was not _upset_ ,” Sherlock hisses. He makes the word sound like a disease.

“Don’t lie to me. I was there.”

Sherlock looks like he’s about to respond in a less than friendly way when Sam slams a cabinet, rolling her eyes. “Ok. Past is past, Sherlock. Victor is a moron and you are an unfeeling block of ice. Can we skip the temper tantrum and move on?”

Victor snorts. Sherlock look affronted. John can’t decide if laughing would be appropriate.

“So,” Victor says after a beat of silence. “How’d everyone take my death? Did anyone cry?”

Sherlock scowls, but answers anyway. “According to Dimmock the team all got trashed yesterday night and Raul ended up breaking Kingston’s nose in a knockdown drag out fight over who gets to give your eulogy.”

“And you?” he asks Sherlock, “How’d you react.”

“150 milligrams of heroin,” John says.

Victor’s face falls. “Shit, kid, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I understand why you did it.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better. Come here.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

Victor reaches toward Sherlock, catching one wrist as Sherlock pushes his hands away.

“Don’t give me any of that sociopathic bullshit. I know it’s not true. Get over here.”

Sherlock submits to being pulled to his feet, and then hugged, with a grimace, arms at his sides like an unwilling child.

For some reason the whole process makes John feel smug. When _John_ hugged him, Sherlock had hugged back.

The intercom buzzes downstairs and all hugging ceases as both Sherlock and Victor reach for their weapons again.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Sam snaps, looking out the window. “It’s the pizza boy. Stand down you homicidal maniacs.”

Sam waits until all firearms are stowed out of sight again before answering the door. When she returns a moment later with two heavenly smelling boxes of food, she’s still frowning.

“Can we please not talk about death and destruction while we’re eating. Please? Just for like…fifteen minutes?”

“Granted.” Victor says, folding a piece of cheese pizza in half. He proceeds to eat the entire thing in three bites, then wipes a path of greese down the back of his arm.

“What do you want to talk about then, pretty thing?” he asks.

Sam throws a packet of parmesan cheese at Victor’s face. “Can you go back to being dead, please?”

Victor grins and starts on his second slice of pizza. “Seriously,” he says, “how’s life? You got a boyfriend yet?”

Sam’s expression becomes morose. “Not even. The last date I had wasn’t even a date. It was when Sherlock tried to set me up with Anderson.”

“Anderson,” Victor repeats. “You mean the rookie cop?”

“Yeah.”

“The closeted gay rookie cop?”

“Yeah,” Sam repeats, sighing.

“Sherlock,” Victor says, “If you’re trying to avoid a man’s advances, setting him up with an underage vagrant teenage girl is really not the way to go about it.”

“Shut up.” Sherlock says.

John just eats his dinner and tries not to freak out at the unexpected turn his life is taking.

_There’s a dead man eating pizza next to me_ , he thinks. And then: _perhaps I should locate my pistol._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. Surprise?


	12. Chapter 12

The first time Sherlock touched John of his own accord was nearly a year after they met.Sherlock had invited himself over to spend the night because his parents were hosting a party, and John had gone to sleep disgruntled because he’d actually had something resembling a date planned before the thirteen year old menace had showed up unannounced and then promptly scared the girl away.He’d left Sherlock in the kitchen, doing something suspicious with a petri dish of milk, and gone to bed early in a sulk.

At that point, the nightmares only happened once every few weeks, but naturally they would occur, that particular week, on a night when there was someone to see the aftermath.

Sherlock found John on the laundry room floor at 1am.

He was sitting in front of the washing machine, arms around his knees, head tipped back against the porthole window. Sherlock could see the sheets from his bed oscillating inside, twisted and wet in a cloud of soapsuds. John was wearing a different pair of pajamas than the ones he went to sleep in.

Sherlock stood in the doorway until John noticed his presence.

“Sherlock.” He said, letting his head fall to one side. “Go away.”

“No.”

He closed his eyes. “Please.”

“No.”

Sherlock moved to sit beside him, mimicking his position, and for some reason that made John furious.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I decided to do some midnight laundry?”

Sherlock ignored his hostile tone, glancing from the washing machine to John’s new pajama bottoms. “I’d say that’s fairly obvious,” he answered.

“ _Go away_ , Sherlock.”

Sherlock studied him for a moment. “It’s normal after a trauma for—“

John’s mouth curled; angry, ashamed. His voice was too loud. “Oh. _It’s normal_. Fantastic. That helps me a _whole_ lot. Thanks.”

“Yelling at me because you’re embarrassed isn’t going to fix anything.”

“ _Goddamn_ it.” He pushed his fingers into his eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, can we just…”

Sherlock shifted, closing the space between them, and pressed his shoulder with studied force against John’s.

“Yes,” he said.

John leaned into the pressure, not enough to overbalance Sherlock, but enough to matter.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Have you spoken to Dr. Sebring about your nightmares?”

“Course. He doesn’t seem to know how to fix me though.”

“You’re not broken,” Sherlock said sharply.

John didn’t know how to respond to that and after a few minutes of silence, Sherlock sat up, distancing himself enough to face John. “Would you like my help?”

John resisted the urge to laugh. “No offense, but I don’t think there’s anything you could do.”

“Of course there is,” Sherlock said, sounding disgruntled. “I’m profoundly intelligent. There’s very little I can’t accomplish if I set my mind to it.”

“Right, forgot who I was talking to. By all means, cure me.”

“Are you making fun of me?” He asked.

“No,” John said, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Sherlock’s expression shifted, just enough to suggest relief, and John felt so suddenly and intensely fond in that moment that it winded him.

“I wouldn’t,” he said again, needing Sherlock to understand, “You’re my best friend.”

Sherlock looked somewhat baffled by this information.

“I am?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Are you _my_ best friend?”

“Course,” John said. “What a stupid question.”

“Oh.”

Sherlock breathed; opened his mouth, but exhaled without saying anything. He blinked, touched his tongue to his lower lip, and then returned to his former position at John’s side, shoulder to shoulder, warm and quiet beside him.

“Good,” he said.

***

Victor Trevor is getting on John’s nerves.

The man is charming, attractive, intelligent, has a wry sense of humor, and a surprising amount of gentle affection for Sam.

But he keeps. _Touching_. Sherlock.

Nothing overt, just a hand on his side as they passed in the kitchen, a lingering of fingers as he offered a mug of tea, the damn near constant press of his knee or elbow or shoulder against whatever appendage of Sherlock’s is nearby.

It’s driving John insane.

And Sherlock doesn’t even seem to notice. _Sherlock_. Who is the least tactile person John has ever known. Who, to John’s knowledge, has never allowed anyone beside himself and Mycroft to touch him casually, is seemingly indifferent to near-constant contact from Victor Trevor.

Sam is beginning to eye John with something close to amusement.

Victor pauses in the middle of whatever anecdote he’s recounting, and stretches, slinging one arm to rest on the back of the couch behind Sherlock’s neck. Victor’s thumb rests against Sherlock’s clavicle, where bone presses out against skin and the soft cotton of t-shirt fabric.

Sam snorts and John sets his mug down with a touch more violence than necessary.

“I should get home,” he says, standing.

“Probably a good idea,” Victor agrees, the pad of his thumb making a slow circle. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in nearly a month. I should turn in as well.”

John can feel his fingers curling. “Turn in. Here? You’re staying with Sherlock?”

“Well I can’t very well check into a hotel room, can I? I’m dead at the moment.”

Victor laughs like that’s funny and John makes a conscious effort to relax his fists.

“Sam has prior claim to the lilo tonight, you’ll have to take the couch,” Sherlock says distractedly. His focus is on his laptop and as far as John can tell he hasn’t noticed that Victor is all but caressing his shoulder.

“ _Couch_ ,” Victor snorts, “Please. I’ll just sleep with you.” He glances up at John with a feral smile. “It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.”

“Yes, fine,” Sherlock murmurs, leaning forward to study the screen. “I won’t be sleeping tonight anyway.”

“Well,” John says loudly, probably louder than necessary. “I’m off. Sherlock.”

Sherlock pauses in whatever he’s reading, and spares a moment of pure focus for John.

“Thank you for coming,” he says carefully.

“Right. No problem. I’ll see around, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Great.”

John leaves, trying to ignore the fact that Victor ducks to whisper something in Sherlock’s ear as he opens the door.

Sam follows him into the hall, trailing him down the steps and onto the stoop.

“It’s good you came,” she says. “Even if the evening didn’t go as planned.”

John steps onto the sidewalk, then abruptly turns around.

“Victor and Sherlock,” he says, “Are they—“

“Together?” Sam supplies.

“Yeah.”

“No. Don’t think so, anyway. Pretty sure Victor was just messing with you. Trying to make you jealous, you know?”

“Oh. No. I’m not—“

“Single?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean. I am single. I’m not gay.”

“Uh-huh.” She crosses her arms against the night’s chill, looking at him from beneath the fringe of her lank Mohawk. “You sure about that?”

“Am I—of course I’m _sure_.”

“Alright. Easy, straight tiger.” She grins at his expression. “I’ll be seeing you, John Watson.”

John shoves his hands in his pockets and heads for the nearest tube station.

“Ridiculous,” he mutters under his breath.

By the time he gets home, John realizes he’s spent the entirety of his commute wondering what it would be like to kiss Sherlock again.

_Again_ , because he’s done it once before.Just once. But Sherlock was 13 at the time and it was more scientific in nature than anything else and John is pretty sure it doesn’t count because if it did that would make John something of a cradle robber _and he’s not gay so it doesn’t matter anyway_ _._

But it does. A little bit.

Sherlock spent the first half of 13 as small and cherubic as ever. The second half he grew six inches and spent a good portion of the time painfully thin and complaining to John about his clothes no longer fitting.

It was near the end of 13, shortly after John realized Sherlock had actually surpassed him in height, that the kiss happened.

Sherlock was laying across John’s bed, bemoaning Mycroft’s interference in his plans for the winter holidays—something about frogs, John wasn’t paying close attention—when he stopped, sat up, and said with an air of certainty, “Something’s different about you. What is it?”

“Hmm?”

“You,” Sherlock repeated. “There’s something different about you. What happened today?”

John put a marker in the book he was reading and rolled the chair he was sitting in to face Sherlock.

“Nothing, really. Girl kissed me after the football match. First time in ages. Since before—since before.”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed.

“Did you kiss her back?”

“No. I kissed her lips.”

It took him a moment to get the joke.

“Funny,” Sherlock said, but he sounded unsure.

“Sorry, no.” John sighed. “I didn’t kiss her back.”

“Why not?Most people seem to find kissing enjoyable.”

“Do you?”

Sherlock made a face. “I’ve no data either way, though I imagine it would be messy and awkward.”

“It’s not so bad,” John laughed.

“They why didn’t you kiss her back?”

John sighed a second time. “Well it won’t work right unless you’re attracted to the person. It’s only enjoyable if you like them. I don’t like her.”

“Oh.”

John thought that was the end of it, and started to turn back around before Sherlock stopped him.

“John.”

“Yes?”

“Will you kiss me?”

It took him a moment to process the question.

“What? Why? You just said you have no interest in it.”

“Of course I have interest in it. I have interest in _everything_.”

“Why me?”

There were spots of color in Sherlock’s usually pale cheeks that John would call a blush on any normal person.“Because. You said it doesn’t work unless you like the person. The only people I can stand are you and Mycroft and I’m relatively sure he isn’t an appropriate test subject.”

“That’s not…Sherlock that’s not really what I meant.”

“I don’t see why this is difficult.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Please?” The word was approaching cajoling. Sherlock had gotten better at using the proper inflection in his words the past year. John couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine, alright. Just. Hold still.”

He pushed away from the desk, letting the chair’s castors carry him forward and into Sherlock’s space. He stopped a few inches away, bracketed by Sherlock’s knees, and realized that with him in the chair and Sherlock on the bed they were of the same height.

Sherlock’s eyes were wide. He licked his lips, looked embarrassed by the movement, and used the back of his wrist to wipe them dry again.

“Relax,” John said, and leaned forward.

He slowly moved one hand to the back of Sherlock’s head, giving him plenty of time to change his mind, and tried to ignore the fact that Sherlock was a boy and four years younger than him and actually really quite pretty, and gave him a quick, chaste kiss, first on his cheek, then the corner of his mouth. Sherlock made a soft noise in the back of his throat and followed John as he started to retreat. The third kiss was a firm press of lips that lingered a bit longer than John originally intended and ended only when he used the hand curled in Sherlock’s hair to gently disengage him.

“Did I do it correctly?” Sherlock asked. His eyes were nearly all pupil.

“Yes.” John said. Then cleared his throat when it came out sounding ridiculous.

Sherlock stood suddenly and paced to the other side of the room.

“I need comparative data,” he muttered, more to himself than John, and John dropped his face into his hands.

“Comparative…oh god. Please tell me you’re not going to start asking random people to kiss you tomorrow. You are, aren’t you? Oh god. This was a terrible idea.”

“Random? No. I’ll pick them according to several predetermined—“

“No. Sherlock. Just—no. Alright? I’ll help you run a full blown kissing experiment sometime but…just not now, ok? Wait until you’re a little bit older. At least another year. Please.”

Sherlock paused, hands on his narrow hips. “Why?”

“Just. Please.”

“Fine. Can we do the frogs tomorrow then?”

“Yes,” John said, relieved. “We can do the frogs tomorrow.”

The frogs were a disaster, but Sherlock never brought up kissing again, so that was something.

John pushes away the memories, checks his mail and takes a relatively angry shower. He wonders if Sherlock has kissed anyone since. And then chastises himself for wondering. He sets his alarm an hour earlier than usual so he can go for a run and absolutely does not analyze the reasons for it. Like one annoyingly fit Victor Trevor who is, probably, currently in Sherlock’s bed.

John doesn’t sleep well that night.

***

Sherlock is relatively certain he is missing something.

It isn’t all that uncommon for him to miss social cues, but being that it most likely involves John, he is actually somewhat frustrated.

Victor is taking a shower, conversing with Sam through the open bathroom door because privacy is something that Victor doesn’t believe in and Sam is homeless, which doesn’t lend itself to cultivating appropriate etiquette. Mycroft would be appalled.

The thought nearly makes Sherlock smile.

He pushes the laptop away, annoyed, and stares at the mug that John had been using an hour before. _There’s probably prints on the handle_ , he thinks. _Microscopic shed skin cells. The remnants of dried saliva on the rim._ He finds himself reaching for it, this thing hosting pieces of John, and then pauses.

_A bit not good_ , he thinks. And then is distracted because Victor and Sam are talking about John.

“--wasn’t really what I was expecting, to be honest,” Victor yells over the noise of the shower.

“I like him,” Sam says, taking a sip of Victor’s tea. “He’s nice. And fit. And a doctor.”

“He’s a baby doctor. And I’m fitter than he is. Civilian life has made him soft.”

“Not a competition,” she says. “Also you might want to ease up. I’m sure if he punches you it’ll still hurt. What with all that rage compressed into such an unassuming little body.”

“He wouldn’t be able to reach my face,” Victor says, and for some reason that bothers Sherlock.

“Still easily in range of other things,” Sam yells back.

“Fine. I’ll play nice with Sherlock’s pet doctor.”

“Good.”

Sherlock decides to enter the conversation.

He stands, oddly uncomfortable in his own sitting room.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“That’s abundantly clear,” Victor answers, voice overly loud as the water cuts off.

“It’s okay,” Sam says. She hops onto the couch so she can reach Sherlock’s hair and attempts to flatten the mess he has caused by running frustrated fingers through it.

“Victor was provoking John,” she explains, “with the touching.”

“Provoking him,” Sherlock repeats. He’d endured Victor’s strangely tactile mood, assuming it was due to guilt or some other tedious emotional response. “Why?”

Sam sighs at what is surely a blank look on his face.

“John was jealous. I think Victor found it amusing. Because he’s an asshole.”

Victor comes out of the bathroom wearing a towel and nothing else. “Thanks sweetheart,” he says.

“Jealous?” Sherlock repeats. He sounds like an idiot and he doesn’t like it.

Sam’s fingers go still in his hair.

“You didn’t notice?”

“No.” Which is strange, because he’s in the habit of noticing everything.

“Well. He was jealous. Pretty sure he thinks you and Victor are an item.”

“Me. And Victor.” He realizes he’s still parroting her but can’t seem to stop himself. “Why would he think that?”

“Sherlock!” Victor yells from the bedroom. “Where do you keep your pants? I need to borrow a pair.”

“Why indeed,” Sam says dryly

Sherlock stares at the mug, still on the table, still harboring little pieces of John.

“John is heterosexual.” Sherlock says. “There’s no reason that assumption would make him jealous. Besides, I’m relatively certain he hates me now.”

Sam pats his head in a way that he probably shouldn’t allow.

“For someone so brilliant you do stupid really well.”

“Sherlock!” Victor yells again. “I swear to god, if you don’t come find me some clothes to sleep in I’ll mess up your sock index.”

There’s a sound of drawers being opened and Sherlock moves down the hall with a growl of annoyance.

He wonders if John has made it home safely and is, similarly, preparing for bed.

_I’ve missed him_ , he thinks, and is horrified by the thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, a kiss.
> 
> Also, Victor is still a dick.
> 
> See you next week!


	13. Chapter 13

John wakes abruptly at 3am with a scream scraping the back of his throat raw.

He sits up, leans his forehead to rest on bent knees, and thanks God that Mike has moved into his girlfriend’s apartment.

He’d only had three nightmares in the four months Stanford had been staying with him—well, nightmares of the screaming variety, at least—but even so, the man is perceptive, and the last thing John needs is to dredge up the past with one of the few friends he currently has.

John’s first thought, still sleep-muddled and time-ignorant, is to call Sherlock. Which, by the time he’s located his mobile, he realizes is a ridiculous idea. The very thought is something that hasn’t been an automatic impulse in years, and maybe it’s because Sherlock has suddenly reappeared in his life, maybe it’s because it seems Sherlock might actually intend to _remain_ in his life this time; regardless, John has halfway dialed the number from memory before he forces his fingers to go still.

 _Well, shit._ He thinks.

Sherlock had been the one to discover, after several months of experimentation, that the only thing continuously useful in preventing John’s nightmares was company. And an awkward discovery that had been, too. Obviously having a kid nearly five years younger than him as a bed partner wasn’t exactly an acceptable daily option. But sometimes, on the really bad nights, it was excusable. If John called, regardless of time or weather, Sherlock would arrive twenty minutes later with his violin and a strange, fleeting sort of gentleness about him that never seemed to last till morning.

And some nights, if Sherlock came without being asked, and without any interest in talking about why he had arrived, John understood that there was a certain amount of reciprocity involved in their friendship, and if Sherlock needed to rant at him for a few hours and then fall asleep in his bed, well. That was alright, too.

John sighs, rests elbows on knees, and stares at the glowing screen of his phone. He wonders what Sherlock would do if he called him now. _Probably laugh_ , John thinks darkly.

He _misses_ Sherlock. He’s gotten very good at ignoring the Sherlock-shaped hole in his life over the past several years but now, being confronted with what he’s been without, or at least the idea of what he’s been without, is something akin to torture. Made worse by the fact that the man wearing Sherlock’s face seems to have very little in common with the boy he remembers.

 _He didn’t mean it._ John reminds himself. _He didn’t mean any of it._ And then, even more reassuring. _He kept the necklace._

_***_

Sherlock discovered the cure to John’s nightmares on a Saturday.

It was three days past Sherlock’s 14th birthday, halfway through John’s second year at university, and they were spending the weekend at Sherlock’s house to celebrate. Of course Sherlock’s version of celebrating involved experimenting on fetal pigs (a gift from Mycroft) and attempting to educate John in astronomy using his new telescope (a gift from his parents—but the card was in Mycroft’s handwriting, so while the money was most likely parental in origin, the gift, Sherlock decided, was technically also from his brother).

John’s present to Sherlock was allowing him to conduct a sleep study. On John.

John hadn’t been able to think of anything else to give him, and Sherlock had been asking for months to be allowed to observe John while he slept. So. There they were.

John had gone to sleep on Friday night in a guest bedroom, trying to ignore Sherlock, sitting against the headboard of said bed, staring at him, and woken Saturday morning with little change to their positions. Sherlock had been oddly quiet that day, and Saturday night John had demanded Sherlock sleep in his own bedroom and they could resume the sleep study Sunday night after Sherlock had some rest of his own.

Sherlock went into a proper strop over the perceived usefulness of sleep and John had gone to bed with an earful of angry violin music through the wall next door.

Naturally, that was the night the nightmares found him.

They were nearly always the same; always started with the ocean.

He was swimming, a few feet below the surface, lungs full, eyes open. It was familiar water, with turquoise-tinted sand and slow moving vegetation. This was the pre-dream, the memory of a summer vacation the year he turned ten. It had been his favorite memory until the nightmares caught hold of it.

So he was swimming. His chest was starting to burn, but he was ten and trying to push his limits, seeing how long he could stay under before he absolutely had to surface.

And then, suddenly, the blue was shot with ink.The dark converged around him, like closing hands, and shadows slid their fingers through his hair, wrapped cold around his ankles and pulled him deeper. When he looked up the sun was warped and dim and he opened his mouth to scream but he was drowning, _actually_ drowning, and he wasn’t prepared for the sheer terror that immobilized him. His scream was soundless, and the ink crawled into his mouth, clawing past his tongue and his molars and he was choking.

And then he was back in his kitchen in one of those sudden geographical lurches that only make logical sense in dreams. He was on floor, braced on shaking hands and knees, coughing, retching.He realized he was dripping on the hardwood and spared a brief moment to think that his mother would be furious… but it wasn’t water he was dripping, it was ink, but it wasn’t ink either because it was too red, too tacky where it smeared— and it was blood, of course it was blood.This is the point where he always realized it was a dream but it didn’t stop him from curling red-stained fingers on the countertop and pulling himself to his feet. He could see his face in the little mirror hung beside the cabinet. It was in the shape of a cow. To match the cookie jar. And the serving platter. And the salt and pepper shakers. His mom liked cows.

The mirror though. Oh God, it wasn’t his face in the mirror and it never was. It was his father’s face.And he shouldn’t be alive, really, shouldn’t be able to hold a countertop or breath heavy in the silence, because he was dead, he had to be with the size of the exit wound on his left temple.

He fell forward, into the sink, through the sink, and then he was breathing hard through clenched teeth and he could hear rain on the roof and it was dark and Sherlock was standing over the bed, watching him.

He closed his eyes and took a moment to drag himself out of wracking coughs and bloody sputum, and back to clean sheets and the tick of rain against the window. He hadn’t pissed himself at least. That was something.

John hadn’t realized that Sherlock was moving until the other boy had crawled behind him, chest to back, knees on either side of his ribcage. He hooked his chin over John’s shoulder and crossed his arms at John’s stomach, tight, but not restrictive. His breath was soft against John’s neck.

“Sherlock,” John whispered, “what are you doing?”

“Attempting to stimulate a temporary release of dopamine. It’s been medically proven that physical contact can decrease anxiety due to nightmares and thus minimize the physical discomfort that accompanies them.”

“English, Sherlock.”

“Hugging. I’m hugging you. Hugging calms people down. It’s scientific fact.”

“Oh. Ok.”

Sherlock shifted slightly behind him. “Am I doing it correctly?”

“Yeah. Yes. I—yes.”

“Good,” he said seriously. “It’s my first time to try it.”

John had to consider that for a moment. “You’ve—you’ve never been hugged before?”

“Mycroft used to hug me,” Sherlock said, the damp warmth of his breath sending shivers down John’s back, “when I was very young. It was pleasant. But I meant that I’d never attempted to hug someone _else_ before.”

“Oh. Well. Nicely done.”

“Really?” He sounded pleased with himself.

“Really. Thank you, Sherlock. I know you don’t like touching people.”

“You, I don’t mind.”

John wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and since the mindless fear had passed he realized with no small amount of embarrassment that he was being cuddled by his fourteen-year-old male best friend.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Sherlock let out a huff that usually meant he was frowning.

“You’ve no control over your dreams. Don’t apologize.”

“I—“ he took a breath and attempted a laugh. “Sorry.”

“Joke?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes.”

He pressed two fingers beneath John’s jaw. “Funny. Your pulse is beginning to slow. Are you feeling better?”

“I think so, yeah.”

Sherlock slowly retreated and John resisted the urge to catch his retreating wrist.

“Go back to sleep,” Sherlock said, as if it was that easy.

“No point,” John answered. “I’ll just have another one. Always do if I try to sleep after.”

“Good,” Sherlock said. “I’ll stay and watch.”

John pressed his palms to his eyes. “ _Sherlock_.”

“ _Please_ , John. I’ve had three hours of sleep. That’s plenty. And the whole _point_ of the study was that I’d get to see you dreaming. _Please_.”

“Okay. Fine.” He pushed sweat-dampened hair off his forehead and laid back down. “Just. Don’t let me hurt you, okay? Get out of the way if I start to thrash around.”

“Obviously.”

For a brief, weak moment he considered asking Sherlock to hug him again. To just press close and share enough warmth and air and empathy to make him feel something other than hollow. He didn’t have that kind of courage though.

“Goodnight,” John said half-heartedly.

“Its morning,” Sherlock answered.

And for some reason that made him feel better.

John woke the following day at half past nine with his face pressed against the pajama-clad thigh of a very disgruntled Sherlock Holmes.

“You didn’t have another nightmare,” Sherlock said accusingly.

“No,” John agreed, smiling. “No, I didn’t.”

***

John decides he may as well get up seeing as going back to sleep isn’t an option, and starts the kettle with a half-hearted glance at the kitchen clock: 4:02am. It’s his day off, and he dedicates the first few hours of the morning to a half-hearted run, followed by finding and cleaning his service pistol, just in case. The rest of the morning is spent attempting to straighten up the flat while thinking about Sherlock. This results in several distraction-related accidents, and after he let’s the sink overflow a second time, glaring absently out the window to thoughts of Victor while washing dishes, John gives cleaning up as a bad job and goes to check his phone for the sixth time in the last hour.

He should probably not be as pleased as he is when he finds a series of messages from Sherlock.

_221B. Come if convenient—SH_

Followed, a few minutes later by:

_If inconvenient, come anyway—SH_

Two minutes after that:

_I know you’re not working today. Mycroft sent me your schedule—SH_

And a minute after that:

_Could be dangerous—SH_

John has his jacket on, and his pistol secreted away beneath said jacket, whistling cheerfully as he walks to the nearest tube station, three minutes later.

His good mood dissipates, however, when Mrs. Hudson lets him into the building and a shirtless Victor Trevor answers Sherlock’s door.

“Morning,” Victor says, looking very tall and tanned and unnaturally hairless. He’s wearing a pair of sleep pants that cling in such a way that very little is left to the imagination. He’s holding a mug of tea and looking smug.

“Sleep well?” Victor asks brightly.

“John!” Sherlock says from the couch. He’s sprawled out like a Greek sculpture, dressing gown rucked and pooled around him like art. His hair is a mess and his fingers are steepled. There’s two nicotine patches on his left forearm.

John moves forward to grab Sherlock’s wrist and begins pulling the patches off with a scowl while Victor laughs.

“John,” Sherlock says again. “Did you bring your gun?”

“My—what?” He rolls the patches into an adhesive lump in his palm.

“Your gun,” Sherlock says. “Obviously you still have one, and after the events of last night I’m assuming you’ll have cleaned it and brought it along. Just in case.”

John sighs. “Yes. I’ve got it.”

“Excellent. Let me get dressed and we can leave.”

“Leave? Where are we going?”

“23A Charleston Street.”

Sherlock rolls to his feet in a liquid movement and disappears down the hall.

John goes into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea because he’s not entirely sure what else to do. Victor follows him.

“You mind telling me why my pistol and I are accompanying Sherlock to 23A Charleston Street?” John says.

“Well, I’d go, but I’m dead.” Victor answers, leaning against the counter in a way that seems orchestrated to show off his torso. “Considering Sam isn’t much of an asset in a fight, and Lestrade isn’t supposed to know that _we_ know about 23A Charleston Street, you were the next best option.”

“I don’t—what is _at_ 23A Charleston street?”

“We’ve no idea. That’s why you’re going.”

“I—“ John takes a breath as the kettle clicks off and pours his mug. He counts to ten in his head as he adds the tea.

“Hey, assface, stop being a dick” Sam says, kicking Victor’s shin as she enters the kitchen.

“Sorry,” she continues, addressing John, “you get used to him eventually. Sort of.”

John raises an eyebrow.

Victor sashays out of the kitchen.

“Anyway,” Sam says, “has Sherlock told you about the current case he’s working? Serial killer who’s leaving some sort of twisted Hansel and Gretel corpse-puzzle for Sherlock to follow?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Well you know how the last guy was found with that epically old cello bow?”

“Yes.”

“Fingerprints came back on it.There were three sets. The dead guy, a set that doesn’t match anyone, and a set belonging to Arnold Pickings who resides at—“

“23A Charleston Street,” John supplies.

“Yup.”

Sam opens the refrigerator, makes a face at something green in a jar, and pulls out the milk with trepidation.

“And why doesn’t Lestrade know that Sherlock knows this?”

“Sherlock tends to hack Lestrade’s email when he’s bored. Lestrade just found out about the results a couple hours ago. Sherlock wants to investigate before Lestrade’s crew goes through the legal steps to obtain a warrant and—“

“Mucks everything up?” John says.

Sam grins at him. “Yup.”

John can’t help but return the smile.

She pours a bowl of cereal and climbs onto the counter beside the sink to sit, cross-legged, bowl in her lap, like that’s a normal thing to do. He supposes that, in Sherlock’s flat, it probably is. There’s a half-naked dead man in the sitting room and a homeless girl eating breakfast on the counter and John is about to go to an address embroiled in an ongoing murder investigation with a contraband firearm in his jacket. He finds he’s somewhat missed Sherlock’s version of “normal.”

“John,” Sherlock says from the doorway, shrugging on his coat. “Ready?”

He is. He really is.

***

23A Charleston is a three-story brownstone with a small, well-kept, gated garden at it’s front. Sherlock jumps over the gate, probably just to be annoying. John pauses to unlatch it before following him.

The door to the building is cracked open and that alone has John resting his hand on the bulge of his gun.

“Wait,” he says softly, but Sherlock has already ducked inside. John follows, of course, because that’s what he does.

The door inside the entryway, boasting a well polished, brass, 23A, is also slightly ajar.

“Sherlock,” John whispers, easing his way around it.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, a clatter of something hitting linoleum, and John finds himself, hardly without meaning to, drawing his firearm with a steady hand and turning the corner.

For a moment he thinks he’s seeing double.

Sherlock is standing a few feet into the sitting room, and in the doorway to the kitchen, facing him, is a man who could be Sherlock’s twin. Well, perhaps not a man. More a boy, really. But he has the same overly slender build, and angular face. He has, if possible, even more hair than Sherlock, and his hands, raised palm-up in reaction to John’s appearance, are familiarly slender and pale. The only difference is the horned-rimmed glasses he’s wearing.

Having spent so much time in his memories recently, John finds the similarity between the boy in the kitchen and the fifteen-year-old Sherlock he knew, remarkable. It’s like looking into the past.

“James,” the boy calls, remarkably unconcerned. “If you could assist me with something for a moment.”

“John,” Sherlock says sharply, but doesn’t have a chance to continue as another man appears from the hallway. John finds himself aiming at a new target. Blonde, military, pointing a Glock at him and not looking very pleased about it.

Sherlock edges closer to John, hands up, eyes deceptively wide, and the resemblance between him and the boy in the kitchen goes from striking to unsettling.

John and the other man, James, both glance at their companions. John watches the slight hitch in James eyebrows as he studies Sherlock.

“I’m relatively certain we’re here for the same reason,” the boy says. “Perhaps the weapons could be lowered.”

Sherlock nods in John’s peripheral vision.

Both guns are lowered.

“I’m Q,” the boy continues, as if they’re meeting at a dinner party for the first time, “and this is James.”

“John,” John says, “And, uh, Sherlock.”

“Yes,” Q says. “I know.”

Sherlock is looking at Q like he’s a very interesting bit of bacteria under a microscope.

“’Q’ is a letter, not a name.” Sherlock says.

“I prefer it, given the circumstances. I’m sure you understand.”

“No,” Sherlock says, and John thinks maybe they aren’t actually talking about names. “I _don’t_ understand.”

“I suppose Mycroft hasn’t mentioned me then?”

“Mycroft?”

Sherlock no longer looks intrigued; his expression is now verging on frightened. The resulting rush of protective anger John feels in response to that is somewhat concerning.

Q steps forward, slowly, and extends one long-fingered hand to Sherlock.

“Quinton Siger Holmes,” he says. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. Surprise? Hopefully this doesn't upset anyone. I'm a big fan of these characters existing in the same world. Also, my headcannon Q and Sherlock are much more similar looking than the actors who portray them in film. See you next week!


	14. Chapter 14

The morning of his 19th birthday, John woke up just past one AM to find Sherlock’s face inches from his own.

“Oh good,” he said. “You’re awake.”

John closed his eyes and took a moment to breathe.

“How did you get in here?”

“Window,” Sherlock answered. “Come on, get dressed.”

John got dressed.

A few minutes later, they were in the back of a sleek black car and Sherlock had his feet in the seat, knees to chest, tugging at the mangled edge of his thumbnail with his teeth.

“Want to tell me where we’re going?” John asked.

“Out of the city.”

“How far out?”

“Only an hour or so. We need to get away from the light.”

“The light?”

John had found that if he repeated the ends of Sherlock’s unhelpful responses, Sherlock would usually get to the point faster. Probably out of annoyance.

“Light pollution. Terrible for stargazing.”

“Stargazing?”

“Stop it,” Sherlock muttered. “Yes. The Perseid meteor shower should be visible tonight. It peaks tomorrow, but.” He waved a hand, as if John would understand what that meant.

John couldn’t decide if it was a coincidence, or if Sherlock was actually taking him stargazing for his birthday.

“Right. Did you think to bring a blanket, at least? I’m not too keen on freezing my arse off in a field somewhere.”

“Yes, I brought blankets. I knew you’d complain if I didn’t.”

John found himself strangely touched.

“Well, I’m exhausted,” he said, propping his back against Sherlock’s curled legs. “Wake me up when we get there, alright?”

“Alright.”

John woke on his own nearly an hour later as the car turned off pavement and onto gravel. Sherlock, he realized, had contorted himself in such a way that his face was pressed to John’s neck. At first, John thought he had fallen asleep as well, but when he shifted, Sherlock abruptly pulled away.

“Are you alright?” John asked.

“Of course.”

“Because I don’t think you’re alright.”

“I’m fine.”

“Lie,” John deadpanned, and it startled a laugh out of Sherlock.

It was silent for several seconds, and just as John was beginning to think he had no intention of actually telling him what was wrong, Sherlock sighed.

“My mother found out my father is having an affair. She’s hysterical. He’s furious with me. And Mycroft isn’t here to tell me what to do or how to fix it.”

“Why is your father mad at you?”

“I’m the one who told her about the affair.”

“Ah.”

The car came to a halt, and Sherlock pushed his way outside with perhaps more force than the situation warranted. John followed, somewhat at a loss.

They were, quite literally, in the middle of a field. Sherlock said something to the driver in low tones and then fetched a stack of blankets and flashlight from the boot and started walking purposely down the dirt path they were parked on.

John trailed him, not saying anything, until Sherlock chose a patch of grass that looked exactly like several other patches of grass they had passed, and laid the first blanket out with studied care. John was already shivering but he decided mentioning this fact was probably not a good idea. He sat when Sherlock beckoned, and nearly groaned with relief when the second blanket ensconced him. He laid back and prepared for a very long night (morning?) of silence.

The first hour was just as cold and quiet as John anticipated. Occasionally Sherlock’s pale wrist would shoot upward, directing his attention, but that was the extent of communication. So it surprised John when, apropos of nothing, Sherlock suddenly spoke.

“When I was six I fell in love with the stars.”

John made an encouraging noise.

“For a full summer I was obsessed. I decided I wanted to become an astronomer.”

John waited for him to continue, but Sherlock was studying the sky with a certain amount of contrition, teeth worrying his bottom lip.

“So what happened?” John asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t want to be an astronomer anymore.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Sherlock answered it anyway. “No,” he agreed. “Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose—Stars are…cruel.”

“Cruel,” John repeated. “How?”

“Because,” Sherlock gestured vaguely upward, “you can look at them, admire them, postulate about them. But you can never touch them. Never really understand them. Not in a way that is enough.”

John didn’t respond for several seconds, returning his attention to the sky.

“That’s…jeez. That’s really sad.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “I thought so too."

John let his head fall to the side, considering the riot of tousled hair above the folds of Sherlock’s blanket, the curve of pale fingers beneath his nose holding the quilt together.

He listened to Sherlock breathe softly in the darkness beside him.

Sherlock, he thought, was a lot like the stars.

***

John finds himself leaning against the kitchen counter at 23A Charleston street, arms crossed, beside a similarly stanced man named James Bond, as two black-haired Holmeses talk in hushed voices, heads bent together.

“There’s _three_ of them?” James asks quietly beside him.

“Apparently.”

“Fantastic. Do you know Mycroft?"

John nodded. "Arrogant git. Smart though, maybe even smarter than Sherlock. And fiercely protective of his family." 

"I'm aware. Q has said that Mycroft is the second most powerful man on earth.”

“Second?”

James grins. “Q is arrogant too.”

John snorts.

They both return their attention to the brothers.

“You don’t seem that surprised by my existence,” Q is saying.

“Not entirely,” Sherlock answers. “My father’s indiscretions were hardly surreptitious.”

“Indiscretions?” Q’s curls reach the top of his glasses, so it’s hard to tell what his eyebrows are doing. But considering his genetics, John can be relatively certain that one brow is raised to match the slightly offended tone of his voice.

“Mistresses,” Sherlock qualifies. “As far as I knew though, there were never any children. How long has Mycroft known?”

“Three years.”

“How did he find you?”

“He didn’t, I found him. Though I’m sure he would have noticed my activities sooner or later. I may not generally use my surname, but it is on my birth certificate.”

“Oh.” Sherlock’s mouth does that thing it does when he’s having an epiphany. “Oh, of course. You’re sixteen.”

“Yes.”

They share a look that clearly means something. John glances at James who appears equally out of the loop. It’s probably a Holmes thing.

“Touching as this family reunion is,” James says. “We’ve only got so much time before the Yard arrives.”

“Sorry,” John says, “but why _are_ you here?”

James nods toward Q. “His business. Apparently we’re looking for something.”

“Not anymore,” Q says.

James has a resigned look on his face that John is sure has graced his own dozens of times. Also a Holmes thing.

“Why’s that?” James asks.

Q nudges his glasses and smiles toward Sherlock. “Because we’ve found what we were looking for.”

By mutual agreement, they all head back to Baker Street. On the tube, John and James sit opposite Sherlock and Q. John keeps missing bits of conversation because they’re talking so quietly, which is more than a little aggravating.

“My fingerprints were on that cello bow,” Q murmurs as they leave the station. “That’s why James and I went to investigate the house.”

“Yours was the set that didn’t have a match in the system.”

“Yes. For all intents and purposes I don’t exist. I’ve been very careful to erase my online presence, so you can imagine my surprise when my fingerprints turn up in Scotland Yard’s criminal database amongst an ongoing murder case. Which, I’d like to talk to you about that. Whatever did you do to provoke a serial killer?”

“More important at the moment is how you came in contact with that cello bow.”

“I didn’t. “

“Fascinating.”

“Quite.”

“Sorry,” John says, and they both shush him. “Sorry,” he repeats, with exaggerated quiet, “but how did you know your fingerprints turned up in the case?”

“I’m a data encryptionist.” Q says.

“Hacker,” Sherlock corrects.

“Occasionally.”

“You’re _sixteen_ ,” John says.

Both Holmes turn to look at John as if he is an idiot.

“Right. Sorry. Sherlock was at Uni dissecting corpses at sixteen. No reason his brother can’t be a hacker at the same age. Good God.”

“I’m an emancipated minor,” Q says. “I work in tech support for MI5. It allows me certain privileges.”

Sherlock snorts. “If you’ve met Mycroft, you should know better than to lie to us.”

“Us?” Q asks delicately.

“Holmeses,” John supplies. “And really. You might as well not.” He glances at Sherlock. “Well?”

“MI6, both of them. Tech support, definitely not, unless that’s what they’re calling operatives these days. They must have recruited Q. Probably found him in juvenile detention for cyber crimes.” Sherlock nods to James. “He, however, is a field agent, obviously. Former military, currently grounded and on babysitting duty for the golden child as punishment for some infraction.”

James looks murderous. Q looks delighted.

“Oh I quite like you,” Q says. "That was brilliant."

Now Sherlock looks delighted.

John sighs.

***

When they return to Baker Street, Sam is gone and Victor is still shirtless.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Q says promptly.

“Pardon?”

“You. Victor Trevor. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Sherlock,” Victor says, in a way that’s meant to convey several sentences and at least one question.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says. “Meet Q. The third set of fingerprints on the cello bow.”

“So, what, he’s the next clue?” Victor asks.

“Apparently.”

“And you just found him. At the house.”

“Yes.”

“Convenient.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

Victor takes a moment to really look at Q and makes a strangled noise. “Oh god, he’s related to you, isn’t he?”

“Well I haven’t done the tests yet,” Sherlock says, “but—”

“ _Yet_?” Q asks.

“All I need is a small sample of—“

“You are _not_ taking Q’s blood,” James says.

“Saliva,” Sherlock finishes.

“No.” James repeats.

“Hair?”

“Also no.”

Sherlock smirks at Q.“For a self-involved masochist with a superiority complex and a dislike of personal entanglements, he certainly is protective of you. More than he should be, considering his guard duty is punishment and hardly voluntary.”

“Excuse me?” James says.

Sherlock’s eyes make a slow slide down James’ body.

 _Shit_ , John thinks. And then, _oh god, this is going to be brilliant._

“Don’t deny it,” Sherlock says. “You have no meaningful friendships. No human interaction beyond that which is required for work or day to day life.Certainly not one for romantic relationships. Sex, yes, and often, but never the same person twice. Not even a pet. Selfish. Fear of commitment. Misplaced guilt. Obsessive need for control. Possibly because of your military career. Short, but brutal. Possibly due to work—a lack of emotion is an encouraged character trait at MI6, after all. More likely, though, it’s due to your being orphaned at a young age. Which leads to the question—“

Q kicks Sherlock, hard, in the shin, and Sherlock goes silent out of surprise, looking somewhat stricken. John resists dissolving into somewhat hysterical laughter.

“Tea, anyone?” he asks hastily.

“I’ll help,” James mutters.

John makes four cups of the Irish blend Sherlock favors while James spends an inordinate amount of concentration preparing a cup of earl grey for Q.

“It has to be to steeped for three minutes, sugar first, then milk at appropriate ratios.” James says suddenly, sounding like he’s quoting instructions. “He gets incredibly grumpy when his tea is made incorrectly. I brought him herbal once and he replaced all of my computer files with episodes of My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.”

John snorts. “How long have you been making him tea?”

“Depends on when you're counting. Daily? The last week. On occasion, somewhere around four years, now. ”

“So Sherlock was right, then? You’re being punished with babysitting duty?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What did you _do_?”

“That’s classified.”

“Of course it is.”

“John,” Sherlock shouts from the living room, sounding disgruntled. “Tea!”

James raises an eyebrow. “And what have you done to deserve babysitting that one?”

“Self-inflicted sentence, actually.” John answers. “I must be mad. Or very bored.”

James picks up Q’s mug, then hooks two others with his free hand. “I’m certainly never bored with Q.”

John carries the remaining mugs back into the sitting room and only barely restrains himself from dumping Victor’s in his lap. He does manage to slop a bit of scalding tea over his right hand when his grip tightens reflexively and a brown stain crawls across the cuff of his jumper. It really doesn’t help his mood.

Victor is, once again, seated beside Sherlock on the sofa. He’s talking to Q about American surveillance systems, but his thigh is pressed the length of Sherlock’s with a careless ease that John finds infuriating. Sherlock is sparing occasional annoyed glances at Victor, but he’s also not moving. And John is beginning to feel incredibly out of place.

“I should go.” John says, setting the mugs on the table. “Obviously you all have a lot to talk about and you don’t need me so—“

“John,” Sherlock says.

“Besides, it’s my day off. I’ve got loads to do. Shopping. Laundry. Bills.”

The very concept of such mundane activity after the morning he’s had makes him want to take the words back.

Q is studying him with pursed lips. John can’t look at him because he is far too close to memory-Sherlock to be handled right now.

“Of course,” Sherlock says slowly. “I’ll walk you down. I need to check Mrs. Hudson’s flat anyway. She’s stolen my skull again.”

“Skull?” James mouths at John.

John suppresses a smile and shakes his head.

“John,” Sherlock says when they reach the bottom of the stairs. He looks uncomfortable in a way John hasn’t seen in years.

“Yes?”

“Victor and I. We’re not—We’re…not.”

“Together, you mean?” John asks.

“Yes. He wouldn’t—he’s twenty-seven.”

“So? I’m twenty-five.”

John has no idea why he said that.

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, looking equally confused.

“Right. Good. Or, I mean, not good, but—I should go.”

“Alright.”

“Alright.”

Neither of them makes any movement and John clears his throat.

“So what’s with the skull then?”

Sherlock shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “You weren’t here. I had to find someone to talk to.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

John swallows and steps outside.

“Right. Goodbye, then.”

Sherlock reaches out, as if to stop him, then curls the outstretched fingers, dropping his hand back to his side.

“Goodbye, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a day early because tomorrow I'll be spending 14 hours in a car with assorted family members, a geriatric dog, and no wifi to speak of. I figured it'd be better to put it up now than around midnight tomorrow. :)
> 
> The real action starts next week. So…prepare yourself?
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	15. Chapter 15

Sherlock Holmes met John Watson for the first time in the shrink’s office waiting room on a Wednesday afternoon. Sherlock was twelve years old. And he thought John Watson was utterly uninteresting.

Sherlock Holmes was rarely interested in living human beings. The good ones, he thought, the fascinating ones, were all dead. Einstein. Sidis. Tesla. Fischer.

John Watson was not interesting. But Sherlock began to look forward to Wednesday afternoons anyway.

He asked John, one day, about the chain around his neck. Sherlock had noticed it’s daily presence when John sat with terrible posture in the waiting room chairs: elbows on knees, back caught in an awkward curve. The front of the chain was tucked into his shirt, but the back would lay, incongruous against the nape of his neck, settled amid two knobs of his spine in the vulnerable space between his t-shirt and the buzzed fringe of his hair.

“They’re my dad’s dog tags,” John answered, and then, even though Sherlock hasn’t asked for further information, “he committed suicide a week after coming home from his third tour in Afghanistan.”

“Why do you wear them?”

“They’re a reminder I guess. Motivation. I’ll wear his until I can get my own.”

“You’re going to join the military despite the logical conclusion that service drove your father to kill himself?”

John tugged the chain to the front of his shirt. “There’s nothing more admirable than sacrificing your life for another’s safety.”

“Your father didn’t die in combat.”

“I don’t know.” John rubbed his thumb over the engraved tags, nail catching in the indentation of letters that spelled his last name. “I think maybe he did.”

Sherlock sat back in his chair and decided that while John Watson was not interesting, perhaps he was not entirely boring either.

***

Sherlock stands in the doorway of Baker Street and watches John’s retreating back. There’s a slight hitch in his walk that wasn’t there earlier in the morning. Sherlock watches until John is out of sight and feels like he’s missing something. He doesn’t like it.

“Hey!”

Sam trots around the corner, waving at him, and he pulls his attention away from the building John has just disappeared behind and refocuses on her.She’s wearing rainbow-colored fingerless gloves that covert into mittens, and the folded-back bit flaps up and down with the movement.

“Hey,” she says again, nose pink from the wind. “You were right, there was a guy watching that address. And he left right after you lot did. Lost him in the tube, though.”

She pats the ratty bag strapped across her torso and Sherlock knows that hiding beneath spray paint and pins there are several hundred pounds worth of camera equipment.

“Got pictures,” she says. “Want to see?”

Sherlock gestures for her to follow him back inside.

“Holy shit,” Sam says, upon their arrival upstairs.

Sherlock moves to retrieve his laptop from the mantle. “What?”

“Please tell me there isn’t some sort of top secret government facility that’s cloning you because one is enough.”

Q, whom she is staring at in something like horror, grins.

“Brother,” he says, “not clone.”

“I’m not sure that’s better.”

“Have you met Mycroft?”

“That’s why I’m not sure that’s better.”

“I’m Q,” Q says, laughing.

“Sam.”

“I—“ Sam is looking at Q in a way that Sherlock recognizes.

“Were you living at Walker boy’s home a few years back? Because I think—“

James stands abruptly and Sherlock finds himself briefly fascinated by the tumult of emotion on the other man’s face.

Q holds out a staying hand as Sam flinches.

“It’s fine, James.” Q says. “Yes. I lived at Walker for two years. You were at the Mayfield orphanage then, if I remember correctly.”

“We walked in the Christmas parade together,” she agrees, still eyeing James. “If you’re Sherlock’s brother why were you—“

“I didn’t know about him until today,” Sherlock interrupts, gesturing for the camera bag. “If I had he certainly wouldn’t have been languishing in that… _institution_.”

“Oh. So.” She returns her attention to Q. “Were you adopted then?”

Q glances at James. “Something like that.”

Sam glances around, then leans to check if the kitchen is empty. “Where’s John?”

“He left,” James says, finally sitting down again, this time next to Q. “I think he dislikes Victor.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Q agrees. “Is he your boyfriend, Sherlock?”

Sherlock moves the camera files from the device to his documents folder and launches the photo-viewing program on his laptop. It takes him a moment to register the question.

“What? Who?”

“John,” Q says in the same instance that James says, “Victor.”

“I—no.”

Victor bursts out laughing and leans against Sherlock’s side. Sherlock, fed up, shoves him away.

“Victor is straight,” Q says to James. “He was attempting to make John jealous.”

“No,” Sherlock repeats. “ _No_. John is heterosexual.”

“He isn’t,” Q says.

“Pardon?”

“I thought you were good at reading people,” Q says, taking a sip of his tea and then giving James a short nod of approval. “John is clearly bisexual. And was clearly staring at your arse when we left the tube.”

“I did see that,” James agrees.

“That’s not—“

Sherlock returns his attention, somewhat desperately, to the laptop, and goes still.

“Victor,” he says. “Look at this man.”

Victor leans toward the screen, still snorting, and suddenly becomes equally somber.

“That,” Victor says, “is Sebastian Moran.”

“I thought you said you killed him.” Sherlock murmurs.

“I did.”

“Does no one _actually_ stay dead these days?” Q asks congenially.

James shifts to get a view of the laptop and his breath hitches.

“What?” Sherlock asks.

“That’s 009.”

“Pardon?”

Q reaches for the laptop and Sherlock hands it over.

“I don’t know him,” he says, looking up at James for confirmation. “009 is a woman now.”

“No, that’s—he was killed in Somalia five years ago. Same year I joined. His name was Seb Moore then. Eve took his place.”

“Sherlock,” Q says, paging through the pictures. “I think we may need to involve a slightly higher power if we’re going to get the information we need about this man. I could get it, but it would take time.”

Sherlock makes a disgruntled noise, but digs his mobile out of his pocket. It only rings once before his brother answers.

“Mycroft,” he says, “I need all the information you can provide me regarding one Seb Moore, also known as 009 of MI6, or, more recently, Sebastian Moran.”

“Of course,” Mycroft says dryly. “Right away. Anything else?”

“I’m rather curious as to why you failed to mention we have a younger brother, but I suppose that can wait until family Christmas, if you’d like. I imagine that conversation would be better in person. Preferably at the dinner table.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” Mycroft says.

“The information on Sebastian Moran, however, is much more pressing.”

“I’ll—I will see what I can do.”

“Excellent. Oh, and Mycroft?”

“Yes?”

“What would you say John’s sexuality is?”

“Bisexual. Obviously. Is that all?”

“Told you,” Q mouths at him.

“Er—yes. That is all.”

“Goodbye. Sherlock.”

“Goodbye, Mycroft.”

Sherlock hangs up, but doesn’t have a chance to respond to Q’s smug expression because police lights color the curtains and one Detective Inspector Lestrade arrives in a squad car at the curb a moment later.

Lestrade rattles up the stairs, swearing under his breath, and then pauses, somewhat thrown, in the doorway.

He studies the group present: James, Q, Sherlock and Victor on the couch, Sam perched on the arm of a chair, and groans.

“Please tell me Mycroft hasn’t cloned you.” He says, staring at Q.

“For God’s sake,” Sherlock mutters.“We’re only half siblings, the resemblance is not that impressive. And Mycroft would hardly try to make _more_ of me. One has been disappointment enough.”

He feels, for a moment, that’s he’s been a bit too honest, but no one else seemed to notice.

Lestrade looks uncertainly between Q and Sherlock, then lets his attention rest on James.

“And you are?”

“Bond. James, Bond.”

“Would you stop introducing yourself like that,” Q mutters. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Everyone here is more than qualified to hear whatever it is you have to say,” Sherlock interrupts. “So would you get on with it?”

Sam looks smug when Lestrade doesn’t take the opportunity to point out that homeless youth is not a valid qualification for government secret-keeping.

 _He must be getting fond of her_ , Sherlock thinks. _Convenient_.

Lestrade sighs.

“There’s been a new murder.”

“In general,” Sherlock asks, “or related to me?”

“Related to you.”

“Where?”

“23A Charleston Street.”

Everyone goes quietly still.

“Uh.” Sam says. “What?”

Lestrade doesn’t seem to notice the sudden tension in the room, which usually Sherlock would berate him for, but at the moment he’s too surprised.

“The fingerprints on the cello bow came back,” Lestrade says. “Three sets, one the victims, one unknown, and one belonging to Arnold Pickings, the owner of the address 23A Charleston Street. We were just there, looking to talk to Mr. Pickings, and there’s a body in the kitchen.”

“In the kitchen,” Sherlock repeats. He snatches the laptop out of Q’s hands, pages through the pictures, and then shoves it unceremoniously onto the coffee table as he stands, pacing a circle around the sitting room.

“You’re _certain_ he left?” He asks Sam, rubbing unconsciously at the inside seam of one elbow.

“Positive, I only lost him fifteen minutes ago past the tube station in Brixton. There’s no way he could have gone back in that time.”

“So someone else, then.”

Sherlock runs his fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to pull. “That’s clever, isn’t it? _He_ is clever. He knew I would have someone watching.”

“Who?” Q asks, in the same instant that Lestrade says “What?”

“Let’s go.” Sherlock puts on his coat. “Don’t let anyone touch anything until I’ve been over the scene.”

“Well, yeah, obviously, but Sherlock—“

“We’re coming,” Q says, and he stands, James in tow, to follow Sherlock out the door.

“Wait a minute!” Lestrade yells after them. “You can’t just—dammit.”

He gestures wordlessly toward the open door, looking at Sam and Victor.

“You two coming as well?” He asks sarcastically.

“Dead,” Victor says, gesturing to himself with the mug of tea in his hand.

Sam sighs. “Sherlock was already at 23A Charleston this morning. He only left around an hour ago, and I stayed another 30 minutes keeping an eye on the scene. The body was left there within the last half hour.”

Lestrade stares at her for a moment, jaw working without sound, and then lets out a strangled noise before following the others down the stairs.

“Sherlock,” he yells. “You have _got_ to stop hacking my bloody email account.”

***

23A Charleston is sectioned off with police tape when they arrive.

The procession of Sherlock, followed by a glasses-wearing look-alike teenager in a cardigan and a muscle-bound man in a suit, gets more than a few sideways glances, but Lestrade waves them in with a resigned look that anyone used to working with Sherlock recognizes.

When they enter the kitchen, Sherlock’s mind goes startlingly and horrifyingly blank.

John is on the floor.

John is the corpse that is on the kitchen floor.

John.

 _John_.

He somehow goes from standing in the hallway to kneeling beside the body in a series of time-slow lurches, and it isn’t until he’s touching the man’s hair, no gloves, with Lestrade’s furious voice in the background, that he realizes the man is too tall. It’s not by much, just an inch or two, but even that knowledge isn’t enough to stop Sherlock from turning the body over.

Not John.

He is so devastatingly relieved he isn’t capable of thinking anything else for several seconds.

_Not John._

_Not John._

_Not John._

His ears are ringing and Lestrade is shouting at him when he blinks for what feels like the first time in ages, and refocuses on the scene.

“The fuck you think you’re doing, Sherlock, you can’t just—“

“This is what John was wearing,” he interrupts. “The jacket, jumper, jeans, shoes, even the socks. This man is dressed in exact duplicates of the clothes that John was wearing when he left my flat thirty minutes ago. He looks similar enough that I was bound, at first, to think it was John. Shot in the back of the head, left face-down and bloody enough to be indistinguishable from a distance. He wanted me to think he’d killed John. But _why_?”

“Sherlock,” Q says sharply, and Sherlock realizes that Q has moved to stand at his elbow. His concentration is shot and he doesn’t like it at all.

“I don’t think these clothes are duplicates,” Q says. “Look.”

He’s pointing to the right cuff of the jumper, where a tea stain sits, just above the wrist. John had made that tea stain less than an hour before.

Sherlock’s hands move to unzip the jacket, pulling down the neck of the jumper, going still when they encounter a chain.

Sherlock’s head rushes with vertigo.

The necklace.

The corpse is wearing John’s necklace.

He removes the dog tags with a savagery that is both foreign and frightening, clutches them in one hand while the other finds his mobile and dials, careless of the blood he’s smearing across the keypad.

“Mycroft,” he says when the line connects. His voice cracks and he isn’t even ashamed. “I need your help.”

***

For his 15th birthday, John got Sherlock books.

There was one about Shakespeare, one about bee keeping, and one, a collection of Plato’s discourses.

Sherlock raised his eyebrow at the last of them and John shrugged. “I asked the shopkeeper what an arrogant, intelligent git would like to read. She picked it out.”

Sherlock snorted, but resigned himself to reading it nonetheless. Because he knew that if he did, and then told John what it was about, John would give him a pleased smile which was second only to John’s fond smile. And really, in Sherlock’s opinion, John should smile as much as possible, regardless of type or reason.

The following day, Sherlock let himself into John’s grubby university flat after school and took a nap on his bed while waiting for John to return home.

It wasn’t until nearly seven that John came groaning up the stairs, but his exhaustion was tempered by a smile of the fond variety when he found Sherlock and freshly delivered takeaway sitting on the floor, waiting for him.

“I should just get you a key made,” John said. “You’re going to break the lock picking it so often.”

“You underestimate my skill.”

“Nah. I’m just aware of your patience. Or lack of, as it were.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

John dropped onto the floor, opening containers with soft sounds of delight, and Sherlock withdrew the book from his bag and tossed it into John’s lap.

“This thing is completely useless.”

“Yeah?” John asked, popping a piece of chicken masala into his mouth.

John licked his fingers, then his wrist where a drop of sauce had landed, and Sherlock was momentarily distracted.

“Yes,” he said, a few seconds too slow. “Rubbish. All of it.”

“Give me an example.”

“There’s too many to choose from.”

“Should be easy then.”

Sherlock sighed, attempting to spoon some rice onto a plate. “There was one story, about the idea of “soul mates” presented by Aristophanes. He said that originally humanity was created with two faces, two hearts, four arms and four legs. They were happy and prosperous, but prideful. The gods became jealous of their success so Zeus split each person in half, and created the human race of today: one face, one heart, two legs and two arms. But the severed humans ached for their other halves, and were cursed to spending their lives attempting to find the piece of themselves that had been lost.”

When Sherlock glanced back up, John was paused in licking the pad of thumb, looking thoughtful.

“What a ridiculous notion,” Sherlock said, “Jealous gods.”

John shrugged, expression the opposite of fond smile: disappointed frown.

“What?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I kinda like it. The idea that the other half of me is out there somewhere waiting for me to find them.”

 _Well._ Sherlock thought. _Yes. Sentimental. And stupid. But…compelling._

“I suppose.”

“I mean, I’ve always thought the whole concept of soul mates was dumb but having it explained that way…god. Makes me want to go out and find her, you know?

 _Her._ Sherlock thought. And wondered why that hurt his stomach.

“It’s just a stupid story, John.”

“But it’s Plato.” John was clearly confused by the sudden sharpness of his tone, but Sherlock couldn’t seem help himself.

“Plato also thought the sun went round the earth. Obviously he didn’t know everything.” Sherlock’s throat was tight and his eyes felt hot and he didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

“I’m just saying it’s a nice thing to thing to think about.” John said.

“It’s _stupid_ ,” He repeated, with more vehemence than was necessary. _Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

“Okay. Fine. Jesus, Sherlock.”

John didn’t say anything else and suddenly Sherlock wasn’t hungry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't fret, I promise the ending is happy!
> 
> To everyone who has commented or left kudos: you really have no idea how much getting email notifications like that brightens my day. Thank you so much. 
> 
> Oh, and I have a tentative final chapter number-22! I've nearly finished writing this story, but there's a few things I'm changing/adding during editing, so it might end up being a tad bit longer or shorter.


	16. Chapter 16

There weren’t many things that Sherlock liked. In fact, after nearly three years spent in his company, John had made a list, trying to decide what to get for Sherlock’s fifteenth birthday. The list was as follows:

_THINGS SHERLOCK LIKES_

_1\. Violin_

_2\. Experiments_

_3\. Puzzles/riddles/codes_

_4\. Animals—dogs & rabbits in particular_

_5\. Shakespeare_

_6\. Being smarter than other people/proving he is smarter than other people_

_7\. Annoying Mycroft_

_8\. Stars. Kind of_

_9\. Bees?_

Nearly three weeks after John had compiled the original list, and several days past Sherlock’s birthday, he found the list crumpled in his jacket pocket. But as he smoothed out the wrinkles, he realized an addendum had been made. Scrawled in Sherlock’s spiky cursive at the bottom of the page was:

_10\. John Watson_

He kept the list.

***

John wakes up with the worst hangover of his life.

Which isn’t right because he can’t remember drinking. He can’t remember much of anything, actually. His head is muddled and painful and he isn’t all that interested in opening his eyes. He does anyway.

He’s in a flat. A relatively normal-looking, if rather sparsely furnished, flat.He’s also handcuffed to the bed frame he’s laying on.

_Fuck_ _._

It takes him several minutes to attempt sitting up, and when he does manage it, ears ringing, he realizes someone has stripped him of his clothes. The worn pinstripe boxers he’s wearing are doing very little in terms of warmth conservation, and he shivers, trying to swallow around a tongue that feels too big in his copper-dry mouth. The fingers of his free hand reach instinctively to his throat and find his necklace is missing.

 _This_ , John thinks, _is really not ideal._

It’s hard to gauge by the light coming in the curtains, but he doesn’t think there’s been much time between leaving 221B and now. He remembers that: leaving. He remembers the awkward conversation and Sherlock’s face, both entreating and cold and entirely confusing. His headache isn’t really helping with the recollection. That’s where memory ends, though.

 _So,_ he thinks. _At some point between leaving 221B and arriving home, I was abducted. They took my clothes, and my necklace. I haven’t been out for more than an hour. Probably._

It’s really not much to go on.

John realizes there’s a bottle of water sitting next to his ankle on the floor, and he reaches awkwardly with his not-cuffed hand to pick it up. The seal hasn’t been broken and he’s thirsty enough to risk drinking it even if it was.It’s difficult to restrain himself to a few shallow sips, but afterward he does feel worlds better.

He clears his throat. “Hello?”

There’s a full minute of silence before he tries again.

“Hello?! Is anyone there?”

Nothing.

“Alright, Watson,” he says aloud, and studies his surroundings. The bed frame is bolted to the ground, no sheets or pillow, just a thin mattress. The handcuffs are too tight to slip his hand through, even if he broke his thumb, and there’s nothing within arms length he can use to pick the lock. He stands, albeit shakily, and uses both hands to pull on the bedframe. The bolts are solid. He sits again, considers his options, and then, baring any other ideas, takes a deep breath.

“Oh _please_ don’t.”

John coughs on the scream he had been building up to, confused by the small, pale man, now leaning in the doorway.

“I can’t have you upsetting the neighbors,” he says, voice lilting and more than a little eerie. “Noise complaints are _such_ a hassle.”

His expressions are over-dramatic, his eyes wide in a way that should convey innocence but instead is solidly disconcerting.

“I’d recommend you stay nice and quiet…like a little mouse.”

John opens his mouth to respond, but the other man shakes a finger, tutting. “Now _what_ did I just say? No talking. Can you do that for me, John Watson?”

John nods because he isn’t sure what else to do.

“Good boy. You stay up here and behave. I’m expecting a phone call.”

John watches the other man leave, then leans back against the wall, handcuffed arm stretched to the side.

He knows he should probably stay awake, keep thinking, see if he can figure out a way to escape, but at the moment all he wants to do is close his eyes and wait for his head to stop hurting quite so badly. So that’s what he does.

He wakes up to darkness and shouting.

It occurs to him, as he tries to claw his way back to consciousness, that the shouting is familiar, and, sure enough, a few minutes later, Sherlock, hands cuffed in front of him, is shoved through the doorway.

There’s a masked man with a gun behind Sherlock and a second man, carrying Q who is also cuffed, but apparently unconscious, a few steps behind him.

“How much did you _give_ him?” Mask #1 says.

“I measured it for his weight, I don’t know why he woke up so soon—“

“I have a very high tolerance for narcotics,” Sherlock hisses. “Do your research.”

“James?” Q murmurs softly, as Mask #2 sets him on the floor across from John. “Stop shouting, please. My head hurts.”

Q opens his eyes, sits up, nearly falls over again, and then groans, sagging against the wall.

“The hell?” John says, as the boy blinks at him.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Q says wryly.

“Are you? Ta very much.”

Sherlock stops arguing with his captor long enough to notice John and nearly trips over himself changing direction. _“John,”_ He says, eyes flicking from John’s head to feet. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“You were drugged.”

“Yeah, I was. And now I’m fine. Are _you_ alright? You’re bleeding.”

Sherlock snorts the same way he did when he was thirteen and scrapped all the skin off both his knees. “Only a little,” he says, probing a split lip with his tongue.

Mask #1 grabs a handful of Sherlock’s hair and forces him to his knees so he ends up on the floor beside Q.

Sherlock spits on him, which earns Sherlock a slap to the face and a kick to the chest. He ends up sprawled on his back, head thumping the ground in a way that John does not like at all. Sherlock has had enough concussions in his life already.

“Well, isn’t this charming.”

The man from before, with his wide eyes and even wider mouth, eases his way around Mask #1, trailing pale fingers along his shoulder.

“I’m actually a little disappointed, boys, “ he says with a pout. “You really made it too easy for me, though I’ll admit your little guard dog was a pleasant surprise, Quentin.”

“What have you done to James?” Q asks quietly.

“Oh, your pet is fine. He’s more useful alive at the moment. Seeing as he’s rather attached to you. I imagine he’s _very_ invested in making sure you stay safe and…whole.”

Q’s lips thin.

“And you!” He says, turning his attention to Sherlock. “We’ve had some fun, haven’t we?”

“Have we?” Sherlock mutters.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s been a ball watching you scurry around after my clues. You’ve enjoyed it too, don’t lie, _Sher_ _-_ _lock_.” He says the name with malice, pronouncing it like two separate words and John would really, really, like to punch him.

“It hardly seems fair that you know my name and I still don’t know yours,” Sherlock says.

“Oh how silly of me. I’m Jim. Moriarty. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Sherlock looks blank, but Q’s lips thin further and his fingers curl into fists.

Moriarty pulls a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and slides his thumb across it, humming tunelessly.

After a moment he holds it up so that both Sherlock and Q are in the shot of his camera.

“Say cheese. Big brother is being awfully difficult, but I think a little family picture may be just what he needs to cooperate.”

“Mycroft?” Sherlock says, rubbing a cuffed wrist awkwardly against his bleeding mouth. “What do you want with _Mycroft_? I thought this was about me.”

“Oh Sherlock.” Moriarty says, crouching in front of him. “Poor boy. Maybe you haven’t heard, but the world DOESN’T REVOLVE AROUND YOU.”

John flinches as soft lilting tones abruptly turn to screaming.

“This was ALWAYS about Mycroft,” he snarls, nose inches from Sherlock’s “And you didn’t see it because you’re a stupid, _stupid_ , child. Of course you can’t fault me with having a bit of fun, but honestly, what can _you_ give me? Hmm? _Nothing_. Mycroft is the one with the power. You’re just his weak spot.”

Moriarty stands abruptly. “And this one,” he runs a hand through Q’s hair, knotting his fingers when Q tries to pull away. “This one was a precaution. Too smart. Too attached to the idea of a _real live family_.” He trails his fingers down the apple of Q’s check. “If big brother had come to you for help when poor Sherlock went missing, oh, you may have. You just may have. And I’m not one for gambling.”

He claps his hands, looking delighted. “So here we are. All together. And—“

Moriarty’s phone rings.

“Excuse me a second,” he says, answering with a flourish. “Hello?”

“Good evening,” Mycroft says stiffly over the speaker phone. “You have my attention.”

Moriarty opens his mouth to answer, but whatever he says is lost in a sudden barrage of movement.

Mask #2 had strayed a bit too close to Sherlock, and Sherlock had taken the opportunity to kick his legs out from underneath him. When the man hit the floor, Q repeatedly hit him in the face with fisted hands, while Sherlock, somehow no longer cuffed, wrestled the man’s gun away and turned it on Moriarty.

A red laser sight immediately appears on Sherlock’s forehead.

“Sniper,” John says, more out of habit than anything else. “Sherlock—don’t.”

Moriarty sighs. “Hold on a moment,” he says to Mycroft. “Your brother is causing problems.” He shakes his head toward Sherlock, as if scolding a child.

“Really? _Really_? That’s the best you could come up with? Oh no, Sherlock. No, no, no. You’re so much better than this. _Think_. ”

Sherlock considers, then abruptly brings the pistol to his own temple.

“Oh, that’s better,” Moriarty says. “Bravo. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good. How _noble_ of you. But the only problem is that you’d never do it. You’re too selfish, Sherlock. You don’t care about _anyone_ but yourself.”

Sherlock’s arm wavers.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft says, as if he knows exactly what’s happening. “Don’t you dare.”

“You won’t do it, Sherlock.” Moriarty sings. “ I know you won’t because _I know you_. And. You. Won’t. Do. It.”

Sherlock closes his eyes and pulls the trigger.

John screams something that might be Sherlock’s name, lunging forward, nearly pulling his shoulder out of socket when the cuffs catch and jerk him back.

The pistol only clicks.

Sherlock opens his eyes. He releases the magazine, finds it empty, and throws both magazine and gun, across the room, looking furious.

Moriarty’s expression is similar.

“What is _WRONG_ with you!?”He shrieks. “You are being so stupid and normal and it is _hateful_. I thought you would be _so much better.”_

He paces a circle around the room and is now standing between John and Sherlock, his back to Q.

“Why are you being so _boring_?”

John realizes suddenly that Q has something in his mouth and barely has a moment to process the situation before Q spits whatever it is directly between Moriarty’s feet.

“Um.” Q says, wide eyes meeting John’s.

 _Bugger_ , John thinks, and only just has time to get his face tucked to his knees before whatever it is explodes.

***

The week before John enlisted, Sherlock showed up at his door on a Thursday afternoon with mussed hair and dirt on his clothes and an expression that made John want to find whoever was responsible and kill them.

“They broke it,” Sherlock said, when John answered the door.

John didn’t understand. Sherlock’s eyes were manic, darks lashes clumped together, wet, like he’d been crying, but Sherlock didn’t cry, ever, so—

“What? Sherlock, what happened?”

John pulled him down the hallway, into his room. The fact that he went, docile, let John move him like a marionette into a seated position on the bed, that was nearly as frightening as the look on Sherlock’s face.

“I—my violin,” he said. “They broke it. Smashed it on the pavement. I could kill them.”

“No.” John started to pull away in shock, but Sherlock’s fingers curled into the sleeves of his jumper, prohibiting the movement.

“They wouldn’t even let me take the pieces,” he continued, voice raw. “They threw them into the dumpster behind the science lab and wouldn’t—“ his throat clicked when he swallowed and he used the back of one wrist to wipe furiously at his eyes.

“I could _kill_ them,” he repeated again. Slower. And it seemed as if he was testing the statement for accuracy.

“John,” he said. His eyes were wide, still so full of fury and sadness but also something else now. “John, I could. I could kill them. I don’t think it would even bother me.”

“Don’t. You can’t say things like that.”

“It _wouldn’t_. I wouldn’t even care. What’s _wrong_ with me? I’m not—“

“Sherlock, please, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry.” Sherlock let go of John’s sweater but leaned forward, bowed head inches from John’s sternum. He knotted his fingers together, as if to restrain himself from reaching for John again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. Can you just—“

John pulled him forward without thinking and Sherlock collapsed slowly against him in a series of shuddering exhales.

“Yeah,” John said, feeling lost. “Hey. I’ve got you. It’s alright. Come here.”

He wanted to ask for names. Birthdays. Addresses. To call Mycroft and demand that something be done, to track them down himself and beat the living shit out of them. None of that would be particularly productive, though.

Instead, John arranged Sherlock in something of a half-moon position lying on the bed, and then curled himself snug against his back. It was slightly difficult considering Sherlock had recently gone through another growth spurt and was now nearly a half foot taller than John, but he made do. Neither of them moved for quite a long while.

John woke up several hours later and found their positions reversed and Sherlock dressed in a pair of John’s pajamas. John realized this meant that Sherlock had awoken, changed, and then purposely reattached himself to John. He wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

When John shifted, the arm Sherlock had thrown around his waist tightened.

“So you like to be the big spoon,” John said, attempting to wedge a pillow more comfortably under his head. “Good to know.”

“There is no big or little spoon,” Sherlock answered, voice sleep-rough. “They’re the same size. Otherwise they wouldn’t nest properly.”

“By that logic we don’t nest properly.”

He was joking, but Sherlock’s voice went flat.

“No, that’s—we are not cutlery, John.”

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I was just kidding. We nest quite well, I think.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said into the nape of John’s neck. “Go back to sleep.”

And John did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've no idea how to write action. Hopefully it isn't too terrible. The next chapter is one of my favorites, so stick around and I'll see you next week!


	17. Chapter 17

Sherlock slept exactly like everyone else, which had always seemed wrong to John somehow. The fact that someone so fantastic, someone who kept a chemistry lab in the bathtub and composed award winning symphonies out of boredom should be subjected to such ordinary behavior just didn’t make sense in his mind. He woke Sherlock up one morning, two weeks before John graduated from university, by running his fingers through Sherlock’s wild hair. John had stopped denying himself that privilege months ago because barriers could not be expected to hold against Sherlock’s particular brand of sleepy vulnerability, no matter how well crafted.

“Hey, wake up, I need to talk to you about something.”

John handed him a cup of coffee and Sherlock immediately went still. John disproved of Sherlock’s affection for coffee, and tended to only extend it as a peace offering when serious conversation took place. There had been two mornings in the past year that he had awoken Sherlock with the penitent beverage. The first was when John accidentally overturned one of Sherlock’s experiments and burnt a hole through the bathroom linoleum. The second was when John stepped on a hummingbird skeleton Sherlock had spent hours gluing together the night before.

“What have you done?” Sherlock asked.

“Enlisted,” he answered.

Sherlock rarely used profanity. He told John often and loudly that his use of expletives was pedestrian and superfluous. So when Sherlock stood and said succinctly, “Fuck you,” before locking himself in the bathroom, John realized he might have underestimated Sherlock’s reaction.

He tried to coax him out for thirty minutes before giving up and going to class.

It took him six hours and four progressively desperate voice messages before Sherlock answered his phone.

“You didn’t talk to me about it,” Sherlock said, sounding, for once, every bit his age. “How could you not talk to me about first?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I should have told you before but—you _knew_ that was my plan. I never made a secret of it. And I know you don’t believe in violence and think that war is archaic and prosaic and all those other words you use when you talk about the world being stupid, but-”

“That’s not it,” Sherlock said, quiet enough that John may not have been meant to hear it.

“What’s not it?”

“I’m not angry because you’re _repudiating my pacifist morals_ , John.”

“Then what? Explain to me why you’re so pissed off.”

“I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“Because. There is only one of you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is only _one_ of you,” Sherlock repeated, and he said it in a way that felt like shouting despite the hush of his voice. “I can’t—the idea of.” He stopped, breathed, started again. “People are fragile. Two hundred and six bones. Skeletons held together by sinew and skin. And perfectly healthy people die every day. Accidentally. In car crashes and muggings and home invasions. And some days all I can think about is the statistical probability of you and your horrible human body being caught up in the mess of chance. It was bad enough before but _now_ it will be worse, do you understand? I want to lock you up where there can be no accidents, no danger, no gunfire in your future, because when you are hurt I am hurt and I know it’s stupid but if you were to die today I think I would die tomorrow because _there is only one of you_.”

“That…that’s, um.”

“Extremely unhealthy. I know.”

“Yes. That.”

The line was silent for several breaths and a noisy swallow before John spoke again.

“If that was your way of telling me you love me, it was pretty fucked up.”

“Sorry,” Sherlock said.

John wanted to return words but they got stuck in his throat. “Can I come over?” He asked instead.

“Yes. Please.”

Twenty minutes later John was sitting on Sherlock’s bed, utterly baffled, as Sherlock ignored him and played The Clash on his new violin.

“I’ve been asking you to play me modern music for years, and today is the day you decide to indulge me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sherlock shrugged, which meant so much more than an actual answer.

“Don’t,” John said tiredly. “Please don’t do that. Not with me.”

Sherlock took an absurd amount of time to settle his violin in its case before moving to sit beside John on the bed,

“You have to come back,” he said quietly, attention on his hands. “You have to promise me.”

“Alright.”

“I mean it. You _must_. ”

“Sherlock…”

John wanted to hug him but wasn’t sure it would be allowed.

“Here,” he said, suddenly struck with an idea. “I want—“ He un-tucked his dad’s dog tags from his shirt, pulling the chain over his head, “I want you to keep these for me. I shouldn’t take them with me if I’m overseas anyway and I know you’ll take care of them until I get back, yeah?”

Sherlock was left briefly mute as John fastened them around his neck.

“These were your fathers,” he said finally, “Are you sure—you never take them off.”

“Yeah. They’re important to me. Like you.”

“And you’ll come back for them.”

“I’ll come back for them,” John agreed. And if he substituted “you” for “them” in his head, well, Sherlock didn’t need to know that.

“Traditionally, I should be giving _you_ something.” Sherlock said, fingers absently tracing the indentations on the tag. “A token. Like when knights went to war in the middle ages. Something for remembrance and luck.”

“You saying I’m your knight in shining armor?” John asked, teasing.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered. John bit his lip.

“Well, alright. Find me a token then. Something to take with me.”

“Alright,” Sherlock said, looking contemplative, fingers still tugging on John’s necklace.

“Want to watch some telly?” John asked, and at that point they both knew telly was just a veiled excuse for something neither of them would admit was cuddling.

“I suppose,” Sherlock answered, trying and failing to look resigned. 

“I’ll go get it on. You order takeaway.”

Sherlock saluted him, smiling slightly, and John breathed a sigh of relief.

He’d always wanted to join the army. Always. And never questioned that decision until that moment. He was really, _really_ going to miss Sherlock.

***

John opens his eyes to a white ceiling and what should probably be a blinding headache but instead is just a gentle throbbing behind his temples. He recognizes the ceiling.

“Fuck.” He says, because he feels like it and he seems to be missing a brain to mouth filter. Clearly he’s been given some sort of pain medication.

“John?”

Sherlock, looking unkept and somewhat pinched, is standing at the foot of the bed. Hospital bed. But the room is…not right.

John blinks a few times. “You okay?” he asks, because he has to.

Sherlock makes an annoyed noise in the back of his throat. “I’m fine. Are you—how are you?”

John ignores the question. “This isn’t a normal hospital room,” he says.

“I requested a private one,” Sherlock says. “Mycroft helped.”

“But. How’re you with me? You’re not family.”

“Mycroft helped,” Sherlock repeats.

John blinks a few more times. “Can’t believe you were going to shoot yourself,” he mumbles, tongue feeling overly large. “Scared me. I’m gunna be pissed when I’m not drugged.”

Sherlock snorts. “Please. As if I don’t know the difference in weight between a loaded gun and one without ammunition. Granted, there was a degree of chance there was a round chambered, but I was reasonably sure that wasn’t the case. It was worth the risk to give Q the diversion he needed.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“John.”

“No, God, it’s like you have no sense of self-preservation at all. Gambling your life is never okay, Sherlock. What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Sociopath,” he says flippantly.

“You’re not a _sociopath_ ,” John nearly yells. Maybe he does yell. It’s hard to tell when his head is so full of cotton.

“Oh really?” Sherlock say.

“Really.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You yawn.”

“What?”

John sighs. “When people yawn you always yawn a few seconds later. I tested it for years but never told you. Yawning in an…” it takes him a moment to remember the right word, “empathetic response. People who have antisocial disorders won’t feel the need to yawn after someone else does. You do. Nearly always.”

The look Sherlock gives him makes John’s ears feel warm.

“You never said anything.”

“Didn’t think I needed to.”

They stare at each other for a moment before John sighs a second time. “So what happened? Back at—Q had…”

“Q had an explosive device disguised as a retainer, something he’s been working on at MI6. Apparently it isn’t actually cleared for use in the field yet as the blast radius is somewhat unstable. James is not very pleased with him.”

“He’s okay though? And James?”

“Q will be fine. He’s got several rather nasty burns but the doctors said lasting damage would be minimal. Possibly some scarring. James is unhurt. And currently with Q in his room next door.”

“Are you alright?” he can’t help but ask again.

“ _Yes_ , John. Clearly. I was the farthest away and wearing the most layers. The only thing damaged was my suit.” He gestures to the white shirt he’s wearing, rolled up at the elbows and only slightly singed around the collar. “The jacket was a lost cause, but my tailor may manage to repair the slacks.”

John snorts something that sounds like “clotheshorse” and Sherlock gives him a tired smile.

It occurs to John that he has no idea if he’s been seriously inured. “What about me? Am I okay?”

“Yes. Concussion. Bruises. Strained shoulder ligaments. Minimal burns on your arms and legs. They want to keep you overnight for the concussion. You were out for a quite a while, which wasn’t surprising considering the drugs still in your system, but nonetheless, the doctors were beginning to worry.”

Privately John wonders if the doctors were the only ones who were worried, but he refrains from saying anything.

“And Moriarty?”He asks.

Sherlock’s attention abruptly drops to his hands.

“Gone.”

“Gone as in dead, or gone as in—?”

“ _Gone_ ,” he repeats. “Sebastian Moran. He was the sniper. I was more concerned about you and Q and I didn’t have—I couldn’t stop him. The others ran but Moran—he came and he took Moriarty, or, the body. I don’t know if he was dead or not.”

Sherlock paces to the window and back, tugging at his curls with a violence that is both familiar and heartbreaking.

“Hey, easy, it’s alright. Clearly you had your priorities straight. So, you got us out then?”

“Q was able to walk to the street. I uncuffed and carried you. He passed out around the same time we got to the car.”

“Car?”

“There were two parked in the back. Our captors left the keys on the table downstairs when they brought us up. Moran took one vehicle, but the other was left.”

“You drove us?”

“I—I didn’t trust a cab. I didn’t know if there were others or if—I’ll admit wasn’t thinking entirely rationally.”

“You _drove_ us,” John repeats.

“Yes.”

“Was that the first time you’ve been in a car since the accident?” he asks quietly.

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry, Sherlock.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry you had to do that for me. Us.”

“I’m not.”He says it so quietly John might not have been meant to hear it.

“What?”

“I—you are important.” Sherlock clears his throat. “To me. I don’t—the feelings I have are—“he makes a frustrated noise and reaches for his hair again.

“Feelings”? John says, automatically trying to lighten the mood. “You’ve always said you didn’t have any of those.” The joke falls flat because Sherlock is just _looking_ at him.

“That would be nice,” he says, and the expression on his face is so bereft that John desperately wants to hug him.

“Would you, can you come over here?”

Sherlock takes a handful of steps that bring him to the bedside, but he’s still out of reach.

“Here,” John says, patting the mattress.

Sherlock looks uncertain. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Sherlock, for god’s sake. Just. Come _here_ you stubborn git.”

He finally acquiesces, perching on the very edge of the bed. For someone so tall he looks exceptionally small.

John pushes the bed controller into his hands. “Sit me up and lean back,” he instructs. “Then budge over and put your legs up.”

Sherlock gets them both into an upright position, shoulder to shoulder, and there’s really not enough room for two grown men on one of these beds, and one of Sherlock’s legs has to stay on the floor, but he manages something of a crooked lounge.

“Good,” John says, poking at Sherlock’s arm. Sherlock looks confused for a moment, then raises the arm in question and John makes a noise of approval, pressing himself underneath it. “You don’t have to use the loo, do you?” he asks muzzily.

“No?” Sherlock says, slowly lowering his raised arm so it settles around John’s shoulders.

“Good. Because I’m about to fall asleep on you.”

John reaches for his necklace out of habit, but his fingers find nothing at his throat and stall just above his collarbone. He makes a distressed noise that has nothing to do with the IV tugging uncomfortably at his wrist and he realizes, somewhat detachedly, that he’s going to be very embarrassed about this series of events at some point in the future.

Sherlock shifts, free hand moving to his pocket, and then a chain is being pushed against John’s knuckles.John curls his fingers around the necklace, too tired to actually attempt putting it on. “Moriarty took it,” he says, and only realizes a moment later what a stupid statement that is.

“I got it back,” Sherlock says. The “obviously” implied.

“Good,” John says, closing his eyes. “That’s good. _You’re_ good. You stay, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Goodnight, Sherlock.”

“It’s midafternoon.”

John smiles.

***

Sherlock watches John sleep with a numb arm and an uncomfortable ache in his throat.

He knows John is medicated, and heavily at that, but the way John was looking at him was…too kind. Affectionate in a way that made him both hopeful and horrified. The warmth against his side is nice. It’s—he can’t describe it. Objectively he knows he’s touch-starved. He knows that humans are social creatures, that they necessitate a certain amount of physical contact and he hasn’t been getting nearly enough for the better portion of his life. But this is nearly painful. Not currently. Currently it’s lovely. It’s the potential pain that makes him want to scream. Because he knows at some point John will wake up and be clear headed and embarrassed and the contact will end.

Sherlock wants to go back: to simple summer nights of chemistry and Hamlet. When John treated him like an intellectual equal, but he didn’t yet have to worry about the nuisance of human sexuality. Their friendship had been easy then; John saw him as a child but, knowing his intelligence, had treated Sherlock like an adult. It was perfect. He misses that brief window of time; when he had all the cerebral abilities of an adult without the irritation of sex muddying the waters. He wants to go back to when things were simple. When he wasn’t this. When touching was platonic and uncomplicated. When John would give him exasperated ultimatums he never intended to enforce and Sherlock would play him Chopin and it was enough.

It isn’t enough now.

He wants to say:

_If Pablo Naruda had seen your eyes he would have written twenty poems of love and one song of despair about them._

But people aren’t supposed to say things like that. So he doesn’t.

  


  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and see you next week!


	18. Chapter 18

John wakes up with his face smashed against the soft curve of skin where Sherlock’s neck meets shoulder. There’s a damp spot on his singed collar and if it wasn’t for a pressing need for the bathroom, John would have gone right back to sleep in the hopes that when he next woke up Sherlock would be gone and he wouldn’t have to deal with…this.

“The nurse will be back within the next fifteen minutes so you may as well stay awake this time,” Sherlock says quietly.

The hum of Sherlock’s voice, so close to his ear, does things to John that he’d rather not dwell on.

“This time?” he asks, sitting up in halting stages.

Sherlock frowns at him. “Yes. You’ve been woken twice in the last six hours.”

He doesn’t remember that, but he’s also got a concussion and an assortment of drugs in his system. It takes a while for him to untangle his limbs from Sherlock’s and then several more minutes to shuffle with his IV to the en suite bathroom. He is red from both embarrassment and exertion by the time he actually makes it to the toilet, and he takes his time washing his face afterward, trying to alleviate the flush in his cheeks. The fact that he can see the shadow of Sherlock’s feet in the crack beneath the door, no doubt waiting to come rescue him if needed, really isn’t helping.

When he emerges, Sherlock follows him to the bed, the heat of one hand at John’s back, close, but not quite touching. And then, once John is settled, Sherlock stands, awkward and unsure, fingers resting uncertainly on the space of mattress he had been occupying minutes before. John hurts. And it’s not just because of his injuries.

He wants to shift over, to invite Sherlock to join him again, but he is far too clear-headed now, and there would be nothing to excuse the gesture. Sherlock’s fingers curl and he takes a step back.

“Is there anything you need?” Sherlock asks.

“No. I’m fine. Is—is Q alright?” John remembers asking about him vaguely, but can’t seem to recall the answer.

“Yes. He’s next door. James is with him. It will take a few weeks before he’s mobile again, and some of the burns may scar, but there shouldn’t be any serious permanent damage.”

“And James?”

“James is unhurt.”

“And me? You said—uh, concussion and—“

“Bruises. Strained shoulder ligaments. Minimal burns. You’ll be released within the next three to four hours.”

The fact that Sherlock is patiently repeating information John knows he’s already given him is extremely disconcerting.

“Are you sure I’m alright because you’re—“

John realizes there’s no nice way to say, “you’re not being an intolerable ass and it’s scaring me.” He coughs. “I—can I have some water?”

Sherlock trips over himself to get a cup and John presses his IV-less hand to his face, trying to think of something to say.

“How did Moriarty’s men manage to get you and Q? And how did they do it without James and or Mycroft killing them?”

Sherlock offers him the water, careful not to touch him as the cup exchanges hands.

John can’t help but notice there is still a damp patch on the collar of Sherlock’s shirt. He wishes he’d stayed asleep a little longer.

“Moriarty left a body at 23A Charleston street,” Sherlock says. “Or rather, one of his men did. The body was dressed in your clothing and wearing your—“

Sherlock nods to his throat and John realizes that, at some point, his necklace has been returned to its appropriate spot. He tugs on it reflexively.

“We knew Moriarty had you, so I called Mycroft. He was able to find the CCTV footage of you being taken. Q found the address of the owner the car’s license plate was issued to. And we went.”

“Without telling anyone?”

“James was with us. We thought we had things well in hand. Lestrrade was taking too long doing things the legal way. And Mycroft would have found us eventually.”

John raises an eyebrow. “So what happened?”

“The house was empty, but there was a computer in the basement.Q wanted to see if he could get anything from it and I went with him. James stayed upstairs to keep watch.”

“And?”

“And that’s all I remember.”

“Ah.”

John drains the water and Sherlock reaches for the empty cup, still strangely compliant, when he offers it.

“So what now?” John asks.

“Now?” Sherlock repeats.

“Moriarty is still out there, possibly. Even if _he’s_ not, Moran definitely is. And you’ve still no idea what he wants, except that it has to do with Mycroft, so probably nothing good. What do we do now?”

Sherlock’s eyes cut to the side, which John knows does not bode well.

“We’re staying at Mycroft’s mausoleum of a house for the next few days. It’s the only place guaranteed to be safe until we can find some answers.”

“We?”

“Yes. We. Everyone who is close to me. Who is involved. You, Lestrade, Q. James.” He glances toward the clock. “Victor, Mrs. Hudson, and Sam are being picked up as well. Mycroft sent someone for them shortly after he visited. They’ll probably arrive around the same time we do.”

“I—Mycroft visited?”

“Briefly. You were asleep.”

John feels like there’s a lot more to that story but there are more pressing things to talk about.

“Look, I appreciate that you’re concerned about my safety and all that. But I can’t just…I have a _job_ , Sherlock. One I’m supposed to be doing right now. I can’t go hide at Mycroft’s house until you figure this out. I’ll lose my residency.”

“You’ve been put on short term sick leave. That should give us at least three weeks to find a resolution.”

“Short term—for a _concussion and some bruises_?!”

“Like I said, Mycroft visited.”

“You are _unbelievable.”_

“John,” Sherlock starts, still not looking at him, “I can do this. I can solve this. I’ll-I’ll get help,” his mouth makes a sour shape around the word, “from Q. And…Mycroft. And I’ll. Fix things. As quickly as I can.”

“Sherlock,” John says.

“I know you don’t—you won’t be comfortable, and I’m sorry but I can’t—“

“ _Sherlock_.”

“It’s my fault you’ve been injured and you’re—“ he swallows. “You’re the largest weak spot I have, apparently. And Moriarty knew it. Knows it. So you must let me keep you safe. Please.”

“Oh my god,” John says. “Will you shut up?”

“Historically? No.”

That actually startles a laugh out of John and Sherlock looks hesitantly pleased.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. “I mean, it is. But I’m not angry or anything. And you don’t need to feel obligated to—“

“No,” Sherlock says, looking annoyed. “No. You are not an obligation. You. _I told you_. You are important to me.”

“Oh.”

He remembers that, actually.

“Right.”

Any further conversation is derailed by the nurse returning. Sherlock retreats to the chair by the window and John submits himself to prodding.

***

When Sherlock said they would be staying at Mycroft’s house, he failed to mention that Mycroft’s house was actually Sherlock’s childhood home. It has been somewhat refurbished, but when they arrive (with a frankly absurd amount of security personnel in tow) John finds himself retreating into memory again. The same wide steps to the front door. The same grand piano in the sitting room off the main hallway.

Sherlock hovers like a particularly scowl-y shadow as John arranges himself on Mycroft’s couch and turns on the telly. And then they both watch, amused, as James carries a protesting Q to join him. Q’s injuries aren’t severe enough to warrant him staying in hospital, but his mobility is limited given the burns on his legs and feet, which had taken the brunt of the damage. His hands, which he’d had the forethought to tuck beneath him, had escaped entirely unscathed, and shortly after James bullies him into taking a painkiller with a bit of toast, he is asking for his laptop, fingers wiggling. James sighs and goes to speak with the security personnel about collecting some things from Q’s flat.

Victor, Sam, and Mrs. Hudson arrive shortly afterward and John, already feeling tense and achy, grits his teeth when Victor’s first action is to wrap Sherlock in a hug.

_Victor cares about him_ , John reminds himself. _He’s a dick, but he was probably worried._

Sam moves to sit beside Q, handing him what John recognizes as Sherlock’s computer bag.

“Bless you,” Q says.She grins.

Victor, meanwhile, is still hugging Sherlock, who isn’t protesting, exactly, but isn’t encouraging the action either. When Victor moves one hand to ruffle Sherlock’s hair, though, Sherlock flinches.

“Hey,” Victor says, nearly at the same time that John does. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and John knows from experience that Sherlock is lying.

Victor clearly does as well, because he catches Sherlock’s chin in one hand, turning his head, and using the other to part his curls. “You’re bleeding,” He says, and John pushes himself up to stand.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock repeats, trying to pull away.

“You need stitches,” Victor hisses. “Why didn’t you get this seen to at the hospital?”

“Let me see,” John says.

Victor turns to look at John with an expression that can only be called fury. “How long did he spend sitting at your bedside _bleeding_ without you noticing? I thought you were supposed to be a fucking doctor.”

“Well I haven’t exactly had a chance to look at the back of his head in the last twelve hours, have I?” John says, fingers curled into fists. “And forgive me if I believed him when he said he was okay.”

“Clearly you don’t know him very well then,” Victor snaps, curling one hand around Sherlock’s bicep. “Come on,” he says to Sherlock. “Let’s get a kit and I’ll sew you up.”

“Yeah, no,” John says, moving in front of him. “I’ll be the one taking care of him. I’m the bloody doctor.”

“Not a very good one, apparently,” Victor says, attempting to push past him.

Sherlock wrenches his arm out of Victor’s grip, but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything because John does something he’s been wanting to do since the day he met Victor.

John punches him in the face.

Victor goes down hard.

At first John thinks he’s actually managed to knock the man out, but a moment later Victor is jumping to his feet, and John realizes with a detached sort of interest that he’s about to get his ass kicked. He probably wouldn’t be able to take Victor in a fight on a good day, and today, his head muddled with drugs and his body aching, is definitely not a good day. He’s bracing himself, thinking, _at least I already have painkillers_ , when Sherlock moves in front of him, shoving Victor backward with a force John wouldn’t have thought existed in Sherlock’s skinny frame.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?” There’s a dark caste to his voice that John has never heard before.

“He _hit_ me.”

“ _You deserved it_.”

Sherlock grabs the front of Victor’s shirt and drags him into the hallway, talking through his teeth. “Blaming John for my injury is completely illogical and you know it. I understand you were concerned for my safety but if you so much as _touch_ him I will never speak to you again. Are we understood?”

“Yeah. Jesus. Sorry.”

He pushes Victor toward the stairs. “Good. Go away.”

Sam pats John on the back, and then follows Victor downstairs, her voice gentle, but chastising. John thinks he hears the term “douchbaggery” being used.

“Well that was interesting,” Q says.

“Shut up,” Sherlock growls, and takes John’s hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Come fix me.”

John’s fingers curl around Sherlock’s, and he allows himself to be dragged from the room.

Q winks at him and he flushes.

The medical kit is the same one that’s always been in the second story guest bathroom. John pushes aside the feeling of déjà vu as he opens the familiar plastic case and pulls out freshly restocked materials. It contains far more than the average household first aid kit, but considering Sherlock frequents the household it’s not that strange.John can’t remember how many times in the past they had been in this exact position, Sherlock sitting on the closed toilet, fingers laced together, head bowed, as John sorts through rolls of gauze and bottles of antiseptic at the counter.

“Why didn’t you have this seen to at the hospital?”

“I dislike people touching me,” he says, lip curled.

John raises one eyebrow at him while he washes his hands.

“You realize I’m about touch you, yeah?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because,” he says, clearly frustrated. “They’re people. You’re—not.”

John isn’t sure how to respond to that. “Right. Well. You mind telling me what happened?” he asks.

“Nothing,” he mutters, just as petulant as he was at 13.

“I still remember your full name,” John says. “Don’t think I won’t use it.”

Sherlock sighs. “When Q’s device went off I fell backward. Hit my head on the window sill. A bit.”

“A bit,” John repeats, gently parting Sherlock’s hair around the cut. “Did you lose consciousness?”

“No.”

“ _Sherlock_.”

“Fine, yes. But it was only for a moment.”

“How would you know?”

“Because by the time I regained consciousness Moran had Moriarty and was carrying him out the door. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes. Four. Maybe. And Q was semi conscious the whole time. I’d sure he’d—“

Sherlock cuts off, hissing, as John pours iodine on the wound.

“Easy,” he murmurs, free hand moving to cup Sherlock’s neck.

He exhales sharply, but doesn’t move.

“I won’t actually have to stitch it,” John says. “Some Dermabond should work fine. But you’ll have to be careful, and let me check it every day, understand?”

“Yes,” Sherlock says peevishly.

“Good. Now hold still.”

John doesn’t realize until after he’s finished that his thumb, resting just below Sherlock’s ear, has been making calming circles against the soft skin of Sherlock’s neck the entire time. He stops abruptly, taking a step back to discard used materials, trying to decide if Sherlock is flushed from pain or something else.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says carefully. And the concentration on the words, combined with the hopeful look he gives John, makes John’s chest constrict.

“No problem. Thank _you_. For, you know,” he gestures for a moment, “before. With Victor.”

Sherlock’s expression sours. “He’s jealous. He’s not in the habit of having friends and I think we are. Friends, I mean. It was accidental, happened when we were on assignment together and. He was worried when I went missing, felt powerless when there was nothing he could do to help and he’s not used to that. Being worried or feeling powerless. I’m not—I’m not excusing his actions but.” He sighs. “Neither Victor nor I know how to express emotion properly. It’s why we get along. Because we are both damaged and predisposed to cruelty.”

“That’s not true,” John says sharply. “Don’t you dare talk like that. The only thing you’re predisposed to is being an arrogant twat, and for some reason I like that about you. Now go take a shower. Carefully. You stink.”

Sherlock doesn’t move for several seconds, expression unreadable. “Alright,” he says, finally, standing. “I—where would you like to stay? Tonight.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Hudson and Sam are in the maid’s quarters downstairs. Victor and Lestrade have claimed one guest bedroom, James and Q the other. You could sleep on the couch, but considering your injuries I wouldn’t advise it.” Sherlock’s eyes drop to his hands. “The other option is my room. I wouldn’t mind sharing, but if you would be uncomfortable, I can—“

“That’s fine,” John says, probably too quickly. “It’s not like we haven’t spent the night in that same room together a hundred times before.”

Sherlock gives him a wan smile. “The bed may struggle to accommodate both of us now. We were rather smaller then.” He gives John a look as he steps into the hall. “Or at least I was.”

“Wanker,” John mutters, but he’s grinning and Sherlock knows it.

***

Six hours later, Mycroft, Victor, Mrs. Hudson, and Sam are all asleep. James and Lestrade are in Mycroft’s study drinking expensive scotch and talking about fishing, of all things, and Sherlock is playing the violin upstairs. John is sat in front of the fire, mixing alcohol with his medication, trying not to stare at Q who is beside him, tapping away on Sherlock’s laptop.

Q is accidentally striking in a way that John has only ever seen in one other person. It makes him feel out of place, looking at Q. Like he’s dreaming and needs to wake up because he knows that Sherlock is not that young anymore. He keeps getting distracted when Q runs a hand through his hair or lets his head fall back against the couch and it reminds John of how annoyed he’d been when Sherlock hit his growth spurt. When his shoulders widened and his torso became more slender than scrawny. When he grew into his cheekbones and started wearing clothes that accented his narrow hips and long legs. Puberty had been exceptionally kind to Sherlock and John had been somewhat pissed about it. All puberty had given john was acne and ill-timed boners.

“You’re staring at me,” Q says.

“Sorry. Shit. I didn’t—Sorry.”

“I don’t mind. I’m honestly just curious as to why.”

John gestures rather helplessly with his beer bottle. “It’s just. You look _exactly_ like him, when he was your age. Sherlock, I mean. It makes me feel like I’m nineteen again and—it’s just strange. Is all. And I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

“You knew him,” Q says, “When he was growing up?”

“Yeah. Twelve through fifteen, almost sixteen. I left for Afghanistan three weeks before his birthday. He was pissed about that.”

“But not after?”

“Pardon?”

“You said you knew him twelve through fifteen. That has a rather conclusive feel to it.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I hadn’t seen him since until about seven months ago.”

Q closes the laptop. “He cut off communication with you? While you were overseas?”

“Yes.”

John expects Q to ask why but instead he says, “bastard.”

“Ha. Yes.”

“Was it when his parents were killed?”

“Yes—how did you?—right, hacker, sorry. Yeah. It was the day after, actually. Sent me an email. Said he was bored of me.”

“Bastard,” Q repeats.

“Too right.”

John has a feeling he wouldn’t be sharing this if not for the several empty beer bottles on the table. He was surprised Mycroft even had beer. John had always pictured him as the wine sort. Poncy. Like his waistcoats.

“Do I really look that much like him?” Q asks.

John brings his attention back to Q. “Nearly identical. Eyes are a bit different.Chin, maybe a little sharper. Same hair though.”

John reaches out on instinct and only just stops himself from petting Q’s head. “God. I’m sorry. I think I’ve had a bit too much.”

“No,” Q says gently. “I understand. It must be like I walked right out of your memories. You didn’t have a chance to see the transition. To watch him turn into an adult. So you’re having trouble joining the childhood version of him you remember with the present version now. And I’m not helping.”

“You a psychologist as well as a hacker?”

Q smirks. “You have to pass some pretty rigorous psych exams to work at MI6. Especially if you’re underage. I studied.”

“You know, you’re not actually supposed to _study_ for a psych eval.”

Q shrugs and John grins.

“He really does care about you, you know. Sherlock.”

John snorts.

“No, he does. And while I don’t agree with what he did, I understand why he did it. I never made friends for a reason.”

“You Holmeses. Too smart for friends.”

“Too afraid, really. “

John decides he is too drunk to deal with the implications of that statement. “Still a bastard,” he says. “Though if he’d just fucking _apologize_ I’d probably forgive him.”

“He hasn’t apologized? He abandoned you for five years and then just expected you to jump right back into playing his sidekick without so much as an ‘I’m sorry’?”

John toasts Q with his beer. “Spot on.”

“Fuck that,” Q says. “No more sex until he apologizes.”

“I—what?”

“Oh. Not to that stage yet then?”

“Sherlock and I aren’t…involved. Romantically.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly. I mean. Sherlock would never—and even if he did, I’m not gay.”

“Oh.”

They both go silent for several seconds.

“But you love him.” Q says it like a statement, confusion coloring his tone.

“I—Yeah. I guess I do.”

Q studies John for a moment and John feels like he should be bracing himself for something.

“Do you not find him attractive?” Q asks.

_He’s Sherlock_ , John thinks. As if that means something.

“He’s beautiful,” John admits. And then puts down the beer in his hand because he has _definitely_ had enough.

“So you love him. And you’re attracted to him. But you don’t want to have sex with him?”

“No?”

“Why not?”

For the life of him, John isn’t able to come up with an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Victor finally gets punched and Q is clearly the most intelligent Holmes. 
> 
> In other news, LET ME TELL YOU A STORY OF DESPAIR. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, and obviously a Benedict Cumberbatch fan, so when tickets went on sale Monday morning for the production of Hamlet at the Barbican theater next Aug-Oct, I set my alarm for 3am (10am London time) so I could join the online queue. 30,000 people are already in the queue when I join. And naturally the queue kicks you out every 15 minutes and you have to rejoin. I literally spent my day checking my phone every 15 minutes, starting at 3 am, so I could rejoin the stupid queue each time it booted me. FINALLY around 1pm I reach the front and…all tickets are SOLD OUT. I nearly wept. I'm still not over it.


	19. Chapter 19

John finds Sherlock in the attic at 2am. Around the same time John had stopped drinking, Sherlock switched from playing violin to cello—apparently Mycroft has multiple instruments available upstairs—and when John pushes open the door he isn’t quite sure what to do. Sherlock is sat in a low chair, slumped forward, his chin pressed to the body of the cello, temple leaned hard against its neck, teeth gritted against the vibrations that accompany the shrieks of furious sound he produces with clinging fingers and moving hands.

John doesn’t know how long he stands there, awkward, watching, unable to interrupt, as Sherlock presses bloodless fingertips to haunted strings, his elbow moving with a kind of aggressive grace that constricts Johns chest. There is something about Sherlock’s fingers; the way they slide with easy familiarity on the neck, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent with vibrato.And the way his hand holds the bow is something different entirely. Emotion is evoked through the simple curve of white digits, the shift of tendons beneath a pale jacket of skin; when the press of a thumb somehow becomes art. 

Eventually Sherlock straightens, carelessly discarding the bow on a nearby piano bench before moving the cello to lean beneath a painting that is probably worth more than John’s annual salary.

“What time is it?” Sherlock asks, his voice strangely muted in the music-free silence.

“Little after two.”

“Is everyone else asleep?”

“Almost. James just came up to collect Q. I figured I’d find you and remind you that sleep is a necessary human function.”

John was hoping to get a smile out of that but he doesn’t.

“Oh.” Sherlock says. “I thought—I assumed you would rather go to sleep without me there.”

John crosses his arms, leaning against the door jamb. “So…you were going to play until you thought I’d gone to sleep and then what, sneak in?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Well. No need for that. “ John holds out one hand toward Sherlock in a beckoning gesture and for a moment he thinks Sherlock may actually take it. He doesn’t, but he follows John down the stairs to Sherlock’s room without complaint.

Someone, probably one of the security people, had packed a bag from John’s flat and left it on the bed. John is surprised to find all of his hygiene products, several of his favorite jumpers and trousers, and even his preferred pajamas and pants. He’s unloading said things into an empty drawer in the dresser, wondering how on earth they had known what to pack, when he finds a piece of paper at the bottom. It’s a list, and it looks as if it was torn hastily out of a moleskin notebook. Every item in the bag is listed in Sherlock’s spiky handwriting.

John folds the paper in half and tucks it back inside, smothering a smile.

It’s strange, getting ready for bed in tandem with Sherlock again. When they were younger he’d never noticed how concordant they were, how easily they moved around each other in confined spaces. They both change into pants and shirts, studiously ignoring the other, and John finds he’s missed this, bumping elbows as they discard laundry in the closet, turning down the bed with the same measured, sure movements; the simple domesticity of brushing their teeth together, eyes meeting in the mirror above the sink.

Sherlock is wearing a worn white shirt that John is relatively sure used to be Mycroft’s. There’s a hole where the collar is beginning to separate and John can’t help but remember the younger version of Sherlock in an identical, if not the very same shirt, muttering under his breath about the incompetence of his lab partner as they readied for bed.

John had been somewhat dreading the actual moment of _getting into Sherlock’s bed with Sherlock,_ but surprisingly it isn’t until they’re both reaching to turn off the nightstand lamps that he realizes he’s already under the covers, his body operating on disused habit and surpassing his anxiety completely. It’s only after the room is dark and silence has settled that John remembers what an awkward situation this is. Also he’s wishing he’d taken another pain pill because his shoulder is positively throbbing.

After several minutes he realizes he’s not the only one who’s wide awake.

Sherlock is in the same position John is: laid on his back, arms crossed behind his head, eyes open and trained on the ceiling. Pale light coming in the window from the streetlamp outside makes his cheekbones look even sharper, his furrowed brow more severe.

“What are you thinking about?” John asks.

“Rabbits,” Sherlock answers promptly.

_Of course_ , John thinks. _What else_. “Rabbits?”

“There’s a book, Watership Down.”

“Oh, I remember. Hazel and Bigwig and Fiver. You used to love that story when you were a kid. Made me read the whole bloody thing out loud to you that one time you were sick.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“Well go on then, I can tell you’re wanting to quote at me.”

Sherlock smiles slightly.

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.” 

John considers this. “So, what. Moriarty is the fox and you need to out-think him then?”

“Something like that.”

John shifts again, trying to find a way that both his ribs and his shoulder are comfortable, tugging at his necklace out of habit. He freezes, flushing, when Sherlock catches him doing it.

Sherlock’s breathes, lips parting, as if he’s about to speak, but doesn’t. His tongue circles the rim of his mouth. He frowns when John lets go of the chain.

“What?” John says.

“I don’t understand why you still wear it,” he says quietly. “I was terrible to you. Intentionally cruel.”

“Yeah, you were. But you were my best friend for nearly four years. I wanted to remember you that way. You know, better. Not cruel.”

“Ah.”

John sighs. “Lestrade told me you still have yours. That you don’t wear it anymore because you nearly lost it in the Thames?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Sherlock says quickly, as if John was accusing him of being reckless. “There was no way I could have known the perpetrator would try and choke me with my own necklace, much less that it would break and he would then proceed to throw it overboard.”

John snorts. “I don’t—that wasn’t what I meant, Sherlock, I was just curious if it was true.”

“Oh. Yes. It’s true. I keep it hung over my lamp now. Safer there.”

“So you were fighting with some criminal on a boat, he tried to choke you, threw the necklace over and you, what, jumped in after it?”

“Yes.”

“ _Sherlock_.”

“ _I had to_. And Lestrade caught the man anyway. He’s not entirely useless on his own, you know.”

“Right.”

It’s silent long enough that John thinks the conversation may be over. But then Sherlock rolls onto his side, propping his head on one hand to stare at John.

“I still have the others,” Sherlock says. “Your father’s dog tags, I mean.” The words are careful, measured. “I can return them, if you’d like.”

“I—that would be great, actually. I appreciate you keeping them safe for me.”

Sherlock nods, then drops his hand, shoves a pillow out of the way, and curls inward. His hair, still slightly damp, brushes John’s shoulder. A knee touches his hip.

John doesn’t move as Sherlock settles into his customary comma-shaped sleeping position, and when he finally stills, exhaling slowly, there are three points of contact between them: Sherlock’s forehead against the ball of John’s shoulder, Sherlock’s knee, just brushing John’s hipbone, and lastly, Sherlock’s hands, curled fingers resting so close to John’s side that when he breathes, they brush his ribs.

“Goodnight, John.” Sherlock says.

“Goodnight, Sherlock.” John answers.

And then he is left with the silence again.

Despite the number of times he’s spent the night with Sherlock in the past, John can only count on one hand the instances in which Sherlock actually fell asleep before he did. As a kid, Sherlock seemed to think sleep was a nuisance and more often then not would literally stay awake until his body mutinied against him. It occurs to John that Sherlock probably hasn’t slept in at least 48 hours between the case and then spending the night awake and with him at the hospital. The fact that he’s willingly in bed without an electronic device is testament enough to how tired he must be. And he had been waiting for John to go to sleep first anyway. Because Sherlock didn’t want John to be uncomfortable. 

There is a sudden rush of fierce affection that swells in John’s chest as he considers the riot of curls mere inches away from his face. John shifts, presses into the areas of contact between them, feels Sherlock’s knuckles against his ribs and the damp, regular puffs of Sherlock’s breath against his upper arm. Sherlock makes a soft warm noise and rubs his cheek against John’s shoulder. It’s hardly a movement, really, and probably not even a conscious one: just a short drag of skin against fabric, but it winds him. John swallows hard, resisting the urge to turn into Sherlock and wrap his arms and legs around him and just press as close as possible. He remembers the conversation he had with Q and flushes, suddenly floored by this thing he didn’t even know he wanted.

He lets his head fall to one side, neck at an awkward angle so his nose is just barely touching the top of Sherlock’s head. He breathes him in and realizes he’s probably not going to get much sleep tonight.

_I love him_ , he thinks. _I actually do._

_Fuck._

***

John was given a month’s notice before he was deployed to Afghanistan.

He spent the week before he left in London with Sherlock, and he found himself touching Sherlock whenever Sherlock was within touching distance; nothing overt, just the occasional brush of shoulders, or knees, the lingering of fingertips on tea mugs and elbows.

Sherlock noticed, of course. He started sitting closer, leaning harder; a purposeful carelessness to his limbs that always seemed to result in an arm or a leg flung across some portion of John. They slept in Sherlock’s bed together every night, despite the fact that they were really far too old for that kind of thing and there were plenty of guest rooms. Neither of them said anything about it, though.

Mycroft himself drove them to the airport on the morning John left and John sat in the back seat, holding Sherlock’s hand, because apparently that was something they did. Sherlock’s fingers were pressed hard into the divots between John’s knuckles in a way that was both fierce and terrified and for the first time in his life, John was beginning to think that joining the military was a bad decision. _I don’t want to go_ , he thought, returning the pressure of Sherlock’s hand. _I changed my mind. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you._

Sherlock didn’t look at John for the entirety of the ride, and it wasn’t until they were nearly to the airport that John realized the fingers of Sherlock’s free hand were tracing letters on the inside of John’s arm.

After a moment he asked. “Are you writing your name on me?” and Sherlock flushed. “Sorry. I’ll stop.”

“No,” John said. And for some reason that was what tipped him into the dangerous territory of crying. “It’s fine.”

Sherlock accompanied him inside and spent a solid minute wrapped around him at the security line while Mycroft shuffled awkwardly.

“It’s just a year,” John said, “twelve months and I’ll be back. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

Sherlock detached himself from John long enough to fish something out of his pocket, and then shoved it into John’s chest, not saying anything.

Confused, John untangled what looked like a chain with a dog tag on it, and then laughed, flipping the disk over.

_Property of Sherlock Holmes_ , it said. _If lost, please return._ On the opposite side, was Sherlock’s phone number.

“Is this my token then?” John asked.

“Yes. You must keep it with you at all times.”

“Alright.”

“That way if anything happens to you, someone will call me and I can fix whatever trouble you’re in.”

Mycroft snorted and Sherlock shot him a dirty look. “Alright, I’d make _Mycroft_ fix it.”

“What about you?” John asked.

“What about me?”

“Usually the only time I’m in trouble is when I’m getting _you_ out of it. How will I know when you need help now?”

Sherlock shrugged, watching as John put the necklace on, and Mycroft tapped his umbrella somewhat impatiently on the floor.

“As touching as this is,” Mycroft said, “John needs to locate his gate and I am required for a meeting in half an hour. Do wrap things up, if you would.”

Sherlock looked like he was going to throw himself at John again, but took a step back, instead. “Yes,” he said, “of course.” And then stuck out his hand.

John rolled his eyes and pulled Sherlock into another hug and the ridged posture Sherlock had been trying to affect turned into a soft sort of clinging that made John’s throat hurt. He tightened his grip on Sherlock’s shoulders and maybe pressed a kiss to the curls of his bowed head before Mycroft started clearing his throat again and they separated.

“Goodbye,” Sherlock said shortly, eyes on the ground, then turned abruptly and stalked away. Mycroft studied John for a moment, who was too busy watching Sherlock push his way out the doors to care, and then followed his brother. “Goodbye, Mr. Watson,” he said tiredly over his shoulder. “Do be safe.”

John got into the security line.

He found his gate a few minutes later and spent the thirty minute wait to board his plane online, buying a necklace that was nearly identical to the one Sherlock had given him. He carefully filled out the inscription paperwork with his phone number and the words _property of John Watson, if lost please return_ , then put away his laptop and found his phone.

He sent Sherlock a text as the flight began boarding.

_Package should be arriving for you next week. Promise to keep it with you at all times, k?_

A few seconds later Sherlock responded.

_I already have a necklace from you_ , the text said, because of course Sherlock knew what John had done.

_I’d rather you wear this one_. John said. _It’s more important._

***

Apparently John is able to fall sleep, because he wakes up to his body aching, sun coming in the window, and a relatively disheveled Sherlock sitting up in the bed, frowning at him, several hours later.

“Wha?” John says articulately.

Sherlock hands him water and a pain pill, which he accepts without question, sitting up himself.

“Were you wearing that when you were shot?” Sherlock asks.

John swallows and blinks stupidly at him.

“I—what?”

Sherlock’s fingers touch John’s chest, points of warmth that rest on the cotton of his shirt where the necklace sits underneath. They linger longer than necessary.

“Were you wearing this?” Sherlock repeats. “When you were shot.”

“Yeah,” John says, putting the water on the nightstand. The twist to do so makes him wince. “I was. I told you, I’ve always worn it.”

“Why wasn’t I called then?”

“What?” John says, still sleep-muddled and baffled.

“That was the whole _point_ ,” Sherlock hisses, as if this is somehow John’s fault. “Why didn’t someone _call me_?”

“They did.”

Sherlock’s body, arched in a tense bow, goes utterly still.

“What?”

“One of my mates did. Called you, I mean. He said you answered but didn’t care. Hung up on him.”

John’s voice cracks on the last word. He remembers waking up in the hospital, feeling like the world was ending, asking for Sherlock before he had the sense not. Rodey had handed his necklace back to him with a somber expression and a shake of the head and then, for a while, it really had seemed the world ended. Some sick part of his brain had hoped that with a bullet wound he might be interesting enough for Sherlock’s affection again.

“John,” Sherlock says, and he realizes that Sherlock’s hands are on both of his shoulders, shaking him gently.

“I _didn’t_ ,” Sherlock says, “I swear, if I’d known—I”

Sherlock’s face twists with sudden understanding and his teeth click together, bared in a snarl, as he thrusts himself off the bed and onto his feet.

He throws open the door, hands curled into fists, and stalks into the hall.

 “MYCROFT,” he shouts, the rough baritone of his voice going even deeper with fury.

“Fuck,” John mutters, and limps after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! In an attempt to enjoy the last bit of summer I have left (and take a break from GRE studying/grad school apps) I'm going camping for a week(ish) starting Saturday. I'll be leaving my laptop at home during this nature-commune, so no update next week, I'm afraid. 
> 
> In other news, I'm trying to decide how I should end this story and I'd like your opinion! Here are the two options: 1. John and Sherlock get their act together. I handle the Moriarty/plot bit. Everything is nicely tied up and finished in around 25 chapters.
> 
> 2\. John and Sherlock get their act together. I leave the Moriarty/plot bit open ended (22 chapters, complete) and return with part two. Part two would be from the perspective of Q and his relationship with James, which would then resolve the plot. Obviously it would still involve John/Sherlock quite a bit, but they wouldn't be the center point of the story.  
> (Regardless, I'll be doing a Q part two, the question is whether or not it's a retelling of this story from his perspective, or if it's a retelling to a point paired with completion of the action).
> 
> Thoughts?


	20. Chapter 20

When John manages to catch up to him, Sherlock has already found Mycroft in his study and the brothers are, for lack of a better word, screaming at each other. Mycroft is standing, arms crossed, looking elegantly furious in an eggplant-colored dressing gown, lips curled.

Sherlock’s hands are braced on the massive mahogany desk that Mycroft is behind and it looks as if Sherlock may vault over it at any moment. Mycroft looks as if he might welcome it.

“ _How could you_?” Sherlock is shouting, “ You _knew_ how I felt about him. I would have done _anything_ —”

“Sherlock—“

“And _how?_ My phone is—”

“That is quite enough.”

“No. _No_. You fucking—“

“Sherlock!”

Mycroft slams both palms against the desk, leaning across it so they are both arched with tension, nose to nose. “Be _silent_.”

Sherlock obeys.

“Mr. Watson,” Mycroft says. “Perhaps you could remind my brother of the date on which you were injured.”

“Uh.” John leans against the doorjamb, trying to find a way to breathe that doesn’t upset his ribs. “October twentieth. Same year I left.”

Sherlock stands abruptly, hand curled around his elbows, hugging his arms to himself as if he’s in physical pain. “No,” he says, which doesn’t make any sense.

“Yes?” John says. “October twentieth. But Rodey—my mate—he called the next day. Might have even been the twenty-first or second, I wasn’t keeping good track of time at that point.”

Sherlock’s body is no longer facing Mycroft, but caught at an uncomfortable angle between his brother and John. He’s pale. Paler, anyway, than he usually is.

“John, I didn’t—“

“Sherlock,” Mycroft interrupts, and the look on his face is both pitying and cold.

“Do you remember where you were, during that time?”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock says, and the tone is nearly pleading.

John finds himself not at all wanting to finish this conversation.

“During October, November and a good portion of December, that year,” Mycroft says, “Sherlock was recovering from his first attempt at suicide.”

Sherlock lets out a soft pained noise.

John feels sick.

“First?” John says, because that’s the only thing he can seem to focus on.

“First,” Mycroft affirms.

John moves his full attention to Sherlock who is clinging tightly to his own arms, eyes on the floor.

“ _First_?” John says again. “I don’t— _why_?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer and Mycroft sighs. “That’s certainly the question, Mr. Watson. Regardless, when your friend called Sherlock, I was in possession of his mobile at that time. As he’d nearly died of a drug overdose, I was monitoring the calls received hoping to find his dealer.”

“So you—what—pretended to be Sherlock? Said you didn’t care that I’d been shot? That’s—“

“John,” Mycroft’s tone is nearly chiding and John finds himself wanting to punch the man in the face.

“Sherlock was institutionalized. He was volatile and unstable and only just beginning to respond to treatment. The last thing I was interested in doing was telling him his best friend was possibly going to die.”

“And when he was better? Why didn’t you tell him then?”

Mycroft’s face falls. He looks more tired than anything else. “He never _got_ better.”

Sherlock flinches, but remains silent as Mycroft continues.

“He never recovered. Not reliably.Losing you of his own volition was detrimental enough. I couldn’t bear to think of what might happen if I facilitated your reintroduction and you chose to leave him yourself, or were otherwise taken from him. Surely you understand that.”

He does.

John is finding it somewhat difficult to breathe.

“How many times?”

“Pardon?”

He turns away from Mycroft, makes it clear he’s addressing Sherlock. “How many times have you tried to kill yourself?”

“Only twice.” Sherlock’s voice is small.

John’s isn’t.

“ _Only_ twice. _Only_. Sherlock, that’s not—“

Sherlock leaves the room abruptly, pushing past John in a way that speaks more of desperation than anger.

John lets him go because he’s in no shape to stop him. He leans harder against the doorjamb, feeling like the whole world’s shifted.

Someone clears their throat and John realizes that Lestrade is standing in the hallway, watching Sherlock’s retreating form.

“Shall I?” He says, and Mycroft nods, gesturing somewhat helplessly after his brother.

Lestrade shoves his hands in his pockets and sets off after him.

“I wouldn’t have,” John says, because he feels like he needs to.

“Pardon?” Mycroft says.

“I wouldn’t have left him again. Won’t. Leave. You know how hard I tried to contact him. You know how much I—“

John swallows around the ache in his throat. “I love him. It doesn’t even matter that he’s—“ John gestures wordlessly. “I just. I love him.” It’s easy to say now, which John should probably find terrifying, but he’s too distracted to dwell on it.

Mycroft’s stance loses its rigidity. His fingers curl around nothing and, somewhat abruptly, he sits in the high-backed chair behind his desk. For the first time that John can remember, his posture is less than perfect.

“You cannot fix him, John,” Mycroft says, and he sounds tired. “I know you think you can. I know you are kind and empathetic and you have a nearly pathological need to heal the hurt in the world, but neither that nor your affection will make any difference here. You cannot fix him.”

“He’s not broken,” John says, and leaves the room.

***

Sherlock is holding a violin, not playing it, and has nearly been through the periodic table twice when Lestrade climbs up into the attic. Sherlock growls something that might be “go away” and moves on to the Fibonacci sequence.

_0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21_

“Sherlock.”

“Go _away_.”

_34,55,89,144_

“Sherlock.”

The pure amount of pity in his tone is too much.

Sherlock throws the violin bow at him.

Lestrade ducks it easily enough and moves to sit beside him with a sigh. Sherlock curls tighter around the violin.

“Don’t even _think_ of touching me,” he says.

“Course not,” Lestrade murmurs. “John and Victor are the only ones allowed to do that. Sometimes Sam, if she’s lucky, and Mycroft if you’re drugged out of your mind. Never me, though.”

All the ridged fury goes out of him at that, and Sherlock leans against Lestrade’s shoulder because he isn’t sure what else to do and he is so tired and he is _feeling things_ and it is _hateful_.

“God you are a mess then, aren’t you?” Lestrade murmurs, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

For the first time in years, Sherlock feels like crying. Obviously he isn’t going to, but the fact that he _wants_ to is horrifying enough.

“I hate him,” he says.

“Who, John?” Lestrade asks. “Because I somehow doubt that.”

“Not John. Mycroft.”

“Doubt that too.”

“John wasn’t supposed to know,” Sherlock says. “Mycroft _knew_ I didn’t want him to know.”

He sounds like a child but can’t seem to help himself.

“You really think that’s going to change anything?” Lestrade says, tucking Sherlock’s bowed head under his chin. “You really think that a man who’s overlooked drugs, criminal behavior, cruelty and years of silence is going to see a suicide attempt and say, ‘no, sorry, that’s where I draw the line?’ Come on, Sherlock. You’re smarter than that.”

“I didn’t want him to know,” he repeats stubbornly.

“Well, he does. So you best get over it.”

Sherlock plucks a few notes on the violin in his lap.

“Is he angry?” he asks.

“John? More scared, I think, than angry. But yeah. He’s pissed he wasn’t there. Pissed you would try it. Pissed you’d try it twice. He loves you. People get angry when the people they love hurt themselves.”

Sherlock tries to laugh but it comes out more as a hollow choked noise.

“He doesn’t.”

“He really, really does. Said so to Mycroft as I was leaving to come find you.”

Lestrade’s fingers comb through Sherlock’s hair above one ear. “You’re mad if you don’t see it. Because the rest of us sure as hell can. And we don’t have anything near the brain you do.”

Sherlock has nothing to say to that, but something awful and hopeful is pushing against his ribcage, making it difficult to breathe.

“What do I do?” he says.

Lestrade laughs. “Well talking to him would probably be a good start.”

“I’ve forgotten how,” he admits.

“Forgotten how to what?”

“Talk. Nicely. I don’t—when I was younger I was more careful. I made an effort to be kind to him. To be normal. To not scare him away. But now—I haven’t been careful for years and I’m…badly out of practice.”

“Might tell him that, then,” Lestrade says gently. “He knows you, Sherlock. He’ll understand.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

Because that’s the horrifying thing. The idea that John might realize Sherlock isn’t worth the effort.

“Just go talk to him,” Lestrade says.

Sherlock leans harder against him. “In a minute.”

***

John is in the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator, when a pajama-ed Sam hauls herself onto the counter beside him. Apparently she’s as opposed to sitting in chairs here as she is in 221B.

“You alright?” She asks, snagging a banana from the fruit bowl.

John glances toward Mycroft’s office. “Did you hear all that?”

“Kind of hard not to.”

John winces. “Did you know? About the—“

“Suicide attempts? Yeah. I mean. Not details, obviously. But—“ she shrugs. “He’s not—I mean, when he has a case he’s okay. Because he’s got something to solve. Something to channel all of his—“ she gestures wordlessly, “Sherlock-ness into. But between cases he’s…not a happy person. Sometimes Victor can get a laugh out of him, but. We all worry. We all know he’s sad. A lot.”

John rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I thought I could do this,” he says, more to himself than Sam. “I thought I could try. To be his friend again and to—“

He swallows.

“I don’t know if I can. Not if he’s doing drugs and wanting to—“

“I was a cocaine addict.” Sam says, like she’s commenting on the weather.

“I…what?”

She sets aside the banana. “Two years ago. I was a cocaine addict. I was fifteen and living on the streets more than anything else. The first time I met Sherlock he said he’d pay me twenty pounds to follow a guy around that day. No introduction. No explanation. But it was twenty pounds, so I did. I met him that night, told him everywhere the guy went and what he did there.”

John wishes his painkiller would kick in because his head is throbbing.

Sam continues. “A week later he found me again. This time it was thirty pounds to watch a building all day. He gave me a camera. I took pictures of every person that went in and went out. I considered skipping out and stealing the camera, but by then I was curious. I met him. He gave me the money. The next week it was something else. And the week after that. And the week after that.”

“He knew you were an addict?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Of course he did. It’s Sherlock.”

“So he knew he was supporting your drug habit?”

“Yes. At first it didn’t seem to bother him. Unnerving, actually, how cold he was. But then one night when I was handing over whatever information he’d wanted, he caught my arm and pulled up my sleeve and just sort of looked at the inside of my elbow for a minute; no real expression, just looking. Then he told me I was too smart to kill myself that way, that it was a shame. And after that he stopped paying me with money.”

John watches as she shifts, tucking her knees to her chest. “What do you mean?”

“He’d buy me food, mostly. Sometimes other things I needed, that he knew I wouldn’t pawn. A pair of boots. A jacket. Occasionally let me shower, or spend the night when it got really cold. He started letting me watch the flat when he was out of country.”

“So what changed?”

“I overdosed. It was accidental. I don’t know what happened, I guess the stuff was cut too strong. When I woke up in hospital he was there. He had a car take me back to his place when they released me and I was out of it enough to go along with it, I thought maybe he would keep an eye on me for a few hours and then let me go. But I was wrong. When I woke up the next morning I realized he’d handcuffed me to the bed.”

“ _What_?” John says flatly.

Sam shrugs. “He handcuffed me. He said he’d decided if I wasn’t going to clean up of my own accord he would force me to.”

“That’s…Ok. And?”

“The next three days were hell. The three after that, nearly as bad. He stayed with me the whole time. Cleaned me up while I screamed abuse at him, forced icecubes into my mouth and then, when the worst had passed and I was reduced to a pathetic shivering mess, he held me. You know how much he hates to be touched, right? He _held_ me. For nearly two straight days as I sweat out the last of the drugs in my system. And by then I was so weak he had to help me shower.”

She picks at the threads stretched across the tear in the knee of her jeans. John just looks at her until she continues.

“He told me I was free to stay with him whenever I needed after that, but that if I ever relapsed he would do it all over again and that was threat enough to keep me clean. He still wouldn’t let me out of his sight for weeks though. Everywhere he went, I went. Eventually he started to trust me. By then I knew he needed someone to look after him just as much as I did. I decided that would be my payment. He saved my life. So I owed him mine.”

He considers this. “Did you know about the heroin?”

“Yeah. At first I didn’t get it. Like, what a hypocrite, right? But it’s different, for him. He’s not like other people who use. He doesn’t do it for fun or to forget, or whatever. It’s like he has to, sometimes. To stay sane. Because his brain just goes too fast and too loud and sometimes he needs to quiet it down for while so it doesn’t drive him mad. I dunno. He’s not like any addict I’ve ever seen. And he’s never used in front of me, or even keeps anything in the flat that I know of.”

“He does it to stop thinking?”

“Yeah. It dumbs him down, you know? He thinks it makes him more normal.”

“Why would he want to be normal? He’s brilliant.”

Sam purses her lips, retrieving the banana. “Normal is safe. And happy. And doesn’t come with baggage or psychological shit to sort through. Normal sounds pretty damn nice to people who aren’t.”

“Right.”

She peels the banana, then gestures upward with her chin. “He’s probably in the attic,” she says, taking a bite.

“And?”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

John sighs and goes upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're interested in camping in the US in the Aug/Sept timeframe, Colorado mountains are so ideal. Also, if you are a person who enjoys camping/hiking/skiing and are not in possession of a penis, there's a thing called a Shewee that will change your life. Go google it. I am not even kidding. This is especially nice in the snow because you don't have to wiggle out of six different layers, freeze your ass off, and then still manage to pee on your boots. Tmi? Probably. 
> 
> In other news, I'm going to go with option 2. I just got a second job, which is great for me, but means my writing/editing time just got a lot smaller. I don't think I'll be able to fully rewrite the ending (for option 1) without putting the story on hiatus for a few weeks. I hope that doesn't upset anyone! 
> 
> This story has 3 chapters left. When I'd done with it I'll be working on editing and posting a Derek/Stiles TW story I wrote as a birthday gift for a friend. And once I'm done with that, I'll hopefully have the rough draft of pt. 2 (aka Q's story + Moriarty's takedown) ready for edits/uploading as well. No set time frame yet, but possibly pt. 2 will start updating around Thanksgiving.
> 
> Whew. Ok. Sorry for giving you my life story there. See you next week!


	21. Chapter 21

Four days after John left for Afghanistan, he called Sherlock for the first time and they talked about the weather for six solid minutes.

The _weather_.

They might as well have said nothing, the awkwardness was so palpable.

Eventually John ran out of ways to express the condition “hot” and Sherlock ran out of synonyms for “rainy” and they both lapsed into silence.

“Are you alright?”John asked finally.

“Fine.”

“Lie.”

That, at least, got a snort of amusement.

“Want to tell me what’s wrong?” John said, “because I think this is the longest conversation we’ve had where you haven’t called me an imbecile or told me something disgusting or complained about your classmates, or your professors, or your brother.”

“I was trying to be nice.”

John laughed outright. “Well you’re not very good at it then, are you?”

“No.”

Sherlock’s voice had gone small, almost apologetic, and John immediately stopped laughing.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” he said hastily, “Just—I’m used to you…being you. And I’m rather fond of you being you. Why would you want to change that?”

Sherlock took a measured breath. “Mycroft says you’re in a stressful environment and I should do my best not to exacerbate the situation.”

“So you thought you needed to change your entire personality so you wouldn’t upset me? Because I’m…delicate or something now that I’m getting shot at?”

Sherlock made a pained noise.

“I didn’t mean _literally_ ,” John said quickly, “I’m very safe, actually, promise. I just—figure of speech. Sorry.”

“So you don’t mind?” Sherlock asked.

“Mind what?”

It took him a moment to answer. “Me.”

“Sherlock, I _like_ listening to you bitch about all the stupid people in the world. I like it when you tell me horrible details about crimes you’ve been researching. Hell, I even like it when you call me an idiot, which I really shouldn’t, probably, but you say it like an endearment. So.” John sighed, the connection going crackly for a moment. “You’re my best friend. You should know by now that I like pretty much all of the things that make you, you.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said. “Well. Good.”

Silence settled again, but it was more pleased than awkward this time.

“I wrote you a song,” Sherlock said suddenly.

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s supposed to be calming. To help you sleep. Statistically more errors are made in a military environment when sleep deprivation comes into play.”

“I’ve been sleeping fine, Sherlock,” John said fondly.

“Well now you’ll sleep better. I’ll send you a media file of it tomorrow, but I wanted to play it for you in person first. Or, over the phone, anyway.”

“Alright.” John said, grinning.“Lets hear it, then.”

There was a sound of moving fabric, the familiar click of a violin case being opened, and the soft plucking of strings before Sherlock spoke again. “Ready?”

John lay back on his bed. “Yeah. And Sherlock?”

“Yes, John?”

“I miss you.”

Sherlock’s response was to clear his throat…pause…and then begin playing.

John tucked the phone between his ear and the pillow, closed his eyes, and called up the familiar sight of Sherlock and his violin: deft fingers, dark eyelashes, and something vulnerable about the curve of his shoulders. The connection wasn’t that good, and the memory wasn’t near as good as the real thing, but it was still the best fifteen minutes he’d had since hugging Sherlock goodbye.

Sherlock, of course, was right. He did sleep better that night. John received the recording in his email the following day and hemoved the song to his Ipod so he could play it as often as he liked. It became something of a habit, then, for him to lay on his bed every night, form that memory, put on his headphones, and then fall asleep listening to all the things Sherlock couldn’t put into words.

***

John is just pouring his mug of tea, debating whether he should carry it with him to go find Sherlock, or procrastinate a few minutes longer and drink it first, when James and Q enter the kitchen. James is carrying Q and they are clearly mid-argument.

“I wouldn’t expect a stupid brute like you to understand,” Q is saying.

“Fifteen minutes,” James answers, dropping Q into a chair at the table. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“I’m the goddamn Quartermaster at MI6, you cannot _withhold my computer privileges_ like I’m some sort of child.”

“You’re not the Quartermaster yet,” James says, opening the refrigerator with more force than necessary. “And yes, legally, you are still a child.”

“I am _very nearly_ the Quartermaster, and an emancipated minor, so in the eyes of the courts I am, actually, an adult.”

“I suppose that depends on your definition of adult.”James mutters, pouring a glass of orange juice.

“Age of consent is 16. The implications of that seem rather adult to me.”

James chokes on his juice.

“Breakfast, Q. Toast. Eggs. Juice. Just eat something and then I’ll bring you your damn laptop. You’re too thin, and if you develop an infection at this point it may very well kill you.”

“Can I work while you’re _making_ breakfast?” He asks, eyes wide and earnest.

John remembers when Sherlock realized what that sort of expression could accomplish. It had been a harrowing few months before John developed immunity to it.

James is clearly already impervious.

“No,” he says, pushing bread into the toaster. “It’ll only take me a few minutes and in the meantime you can talk to us, like a real live human being.”

Q looks beseechingly at Sam, who is still sitting on the counter, working on a second banana, and watching the exchange with interest. She shrugs at him and he turns his pleading face to John.

John stifles a laugh, shaking his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m with him on this one. You definitely need some feeding up. And rest.”

Q looks betrayed.

“Sorry,” he repeats, gesturing to himself with his mug. “Doctor.”

Q returns his attention to James with a scowl.

“I’ll change your passwords,” he threatens. “I’ll replace your porn with cat videos.”

James snorts, extracting a frying pan from the cabinet. “Not much of an incentive for me to put a computer in your hands then, is it?”

“ _Please_ , James.”

James sighs, moving to stand behind Q’s chair.

“Please, Q,” he mimics, free hand curling around the back of the boy’s neck. His voice is soft and strangely contained.

“Fine,” Q mutters, adding a moment later: “Tyrant.”

“Child,” James retorts, turning on the stove.

“Age of consent.” Q answers.

James focuses very pointedly on cracking eggs.

John finds himself grinning at them.

The grin abruptly fades, however, when he realizes Sherlock is standing in the doorway looking at him.

The expression on his face is unkind.

“Er, hi,” John says. “I was just about to come looking for you.”

Sherlock turns and walks back down the hall.

John glances around the kitchen, considers the equally puzzled looks on their faces, and then follows him.

***

Sherlock goes to his room because it’s a habit. Because he’d like to go back to the attic but he’s just come from there and he’d probably run into Lestrade on his way and the last thing he wants is another painfully pedestrian heart to heart with the only man in his life that vaguely represents some sort of father figure.He throws himself onto the bed and realizes he doesn’t actually know how old Lestrade is. He’s going prematurely grey, but the man can’t be older than Mycroft. Then again, Mycroft has always been ancient.

It’s as he’s pondering this that John comes limping into the room looking flushed and uncomfortable.

“I’d really appreciate it if you’d quit taking off like that,” John says, moving to sit on the edge of the mattress with a groan. My entire body is positively furious with me at the moment.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer because the only things he wants to say should probably not be said.

“You want to tell me what’s got you in such an epic sulk?”

He stays silent.

“Alright. That’s fine. Budge over though, I’d like to be comfortable while I wait for you to rediscover the power of language.”

Sherlock shoves his face into a pillow, then sits up, resisting the childish urge to curl into a ball and ignore the world completely.

“He’s not me,” Sherlock says before he can stop himself.

“What?”

“Q. He’s not me.”

John’s face is doing something he can’t interpret. “I know that.” He says slowly.

“I don’t like the way you look at him.”

_Fuck_ , Sherlock thinks, _This is not at all the conversation they were supposed to be having._

“I—what?”

Sherlock swallows. “You. You look at him the way you used to look at me. But you don’t, look at me that way anymore and it’s—I don’t like it.”

John’s expression is somewhere between embarrassed and angry. “Yeah, well my only friend abandoned me without so much as an ‘I’m sorry’ while I was getting shot at in the desert.Forgive me if I’d rather remember the decent version of him.”

That hurts. Probably more so because he knows it’s true

“You had your family.”

John laughs in a way that isn’t even vaguely comedic. “Harry was in rehab and the last I’d spoken to her she said she never wanted to see me again. You suppose I should have called her?”

“Your mother then?”

“She’s dead, Sherlock.”

“What?”

John closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I tried to call you,” he says, more resigned than malicious.

Sherlock flinches anyway.

“You had friends,” he says, somewhat grasping, he knows.

“No.” John answers. “I had acquaintances. I only had one friend. One. And then, for a while, I didn’t have any. I recovered by myself. I came back by myself. And then I had to figure out how to start living life again _by myself_.”

“I couldn’t have been there for you anyway,” Sherlock says sharply, lips curled. “I was a bit preoccupied what with _nearly dying_ and then being institutionalized against my will.”

“Don’t.” John says. “Don’t you dare. You weren’t the only one to get low, Sherlock. To be scared and alone and so sick of the world you wanted it to stop. So quit acting like you’re so damn special.”

_No._

Sherlock goes utterly still because the very idea is utterly unacceptable.

“I’m sorry.”

He tries to say it entirely without pretense. He wants to reach for John, to somehow prove to him that he means it, because John of all people knows that he can fake contrition with alacrity.

_Believe me_ , he thinks desperately. _Please._

“I know that’s not enough. But I am. But I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John.”

John sighs, pushing the palms of his hands into his eyes. “God we’ve fucked this up, haven’t we?”

“I don’t—“ Sherlock’s mouth has gone dry because that sounds like John is giving up and he can’t. _He can’t_.

“I can fix it,” Sherlock says, and he’s not even ashamed at the desperation in his voice “Give me time and—“

“No, that’s not what I meant,” John says. “Just. We’re kind of a mess.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, because it seems like that’s what John wants.

“We’ll be alright though, yeah?”

“Yes,” he repeats, vehement this time.

“I just. I still don’t understand why you did it. _How_ you could do it. I couldn’t have given you up if I wanted to. Still couldn’t. And you…it seemed so easy.”

“No.”

Sherlock pushes himself off the bed. He starts pacing because John’s eyebrows are pinched and he’s got the inside of his bottom lip trapped between his teeth and that means that he isn’t going to let it go. It means that he’s going to want an explanation, a real one, and Sherlock isn’t sure he can give John one that makes sense but he’s certain he can’t do it standing still.

“Imagine you were born blind,” Sherlock says.

“What?”

“You grew up blind.” He presses. “You lived in a world where “sight” was something talked about but not experienced. Your world was dark but it was OK because you didn’t have anything to compare it to.”

“I—Alright.”

“But then, imagine you met someone, and when you were with them you could see. Suddenly you knew what sight was. You could name colors and understand the shades of light and shadow. Suddenly you knew exactly what you had been missing your entire life and at first, it’s wonderful. You love it. You don’t want to sleep because there’s so much you want to see and so you spend every waking second with this person; this thing that has allowed you to experience something others take so very much for granted.”

He pauses, running a hand through his hair. John is looking at him expectantly.

“But then something changes. You realize that this can be taken away because the person can be taken away. You realize this is a terrible, terrible thing. Because when you are not with that person, when they go to their own house at night or spend the weekend with friends or take a family holiday, you’re alone again and you can’t _see_ anymore. And you know, you have to know, that eventually this person will leave you permanently.”

“Sherlock,” John says softly, but Sherlock keeps on talking, words colliding in his hurry to get them out.

“And that realization leaves you breathless and terrified at night when you’re alone and you can no longer see and you can’t sleep for fear that maybe the next day will be the day that your miracle realizes they don’t need you the way you need them.”

His voice cracks.

“Suddenly everything is awful. Because inevitably the day will come when you will be forced back into your prior darkness. And before, before it was okay. You didn’t mind the nothing because you didn’t know what the everything was like. But now you _do_ know and nothing will ever be ok again. Because while the darkness may be familiar and you know how to operate in it perfectly well, there will be no more happiness. Because you have experienced the more and are being forced to live in the less.”

He pulls in a deep breath and the room is profoundly silent.

John is looking at him with—not pity, exactly, but it’s a sad sort of affection.

“So.” John says.

He swallows, licks his lips, starts again.

“So you’re saying you were afraid I’d leave? That I’d realize I didn’t need you the way you needed me and just…be done with you.”

Amongst other things. “Yes.”

“Do you still feel that way now?”

“What,” Sherlock says, self-depreciatingly, “a crippling and unhealthy dependence upon you?”

“Sherlock.”

“Yes.” He finally stops pacing, returns to sit at the other end of the bed. “I still feel that way.”

John stands, and rubs at the back of his head, the familiar gesture fluffing up his hair in a way that makes Sherlock’s chest hurt.

“I thought—we already talked about this,” John says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. I do.”

“But I upset you.”

“Often. And I deal with it. I have. For ages. You abandoned me for _five fucking years_ and I’m still dealing with that and probably will be for a while but I’m not going to give up on you. That’s not going to change.”

“One day it will be too much. I know you don’t think so now, you think you know me—the extent of danger and crazy and everything else but one day, John, I promise you, I will do something that’s too much. One day _I_ will be too much.”

“No.”

Sherlock lets out a noise of annoyance. “You can’t just say ‘no’. It’s an inevitability.”

“No.”

“John.”

“ _No_. ” John moves the distance between them, slowly, as if he’s approaching a wild animal, and stops, arms crossed, standing in the space between Sherlock’s spread knees. Like this, with Sherlock sitting and John standing, John is taller.

For a moment John looks torn, nervous, and it is Sherlock’s turn to hold very still, uncertain why, but equally sure that something of importance is happening in John’s head and he should probably do his best not to derail the situation. Eventually John moves forward and—Sherlock’s mind goes startlingly blank.

It isn’t a kiss. John reaches out both hands, catches the back of Sherlock’s neck, and pulls him into his space. Head ducked, thumbs tucked beneath his jaw, John rests his mouth against Sherlock’s forehead for the space of three seconds before leaning away again.

It isn’t a kiss.

But it’s close.

“No,” John says again, firmly.

Sherlock doesn’t argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not entirely happy with this chapter, but I got tired of changing it, so here it is! We return to the action next chapter, now that there's been a bit of reconciliation on the emotional side of things. See you next week!


	22. Chapter 22

One of the first things John did, once he arrived in Afghanistan, was set up a schedule for weekly Thursday skype calls with Sherlock. It was near the end of one such call, however, that Sherlock sighed, tugging on his necklace, and said, “I won’t be able to talk next week.”

“What? Why?”

“Some family event in the country. We’ll be gone all day, driving back late that night. I tried to get out of it but apparently it’s necessary I attend.”

The idea of not seeing Sherlock’s grainy face for two weeks was nearly unbearable.

“I’m sorry.” John said, because he figured demanding Sherlock call him anyway would be immature.

“Yes, well. They’re forcing Mycroft to go too. I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.”

John raised his eyebrows. “They’re putting the two of you in the same car? Intentionally?”

Sherlock snorted. “No. Mycroft is going separately. He has to leave an hour early because of some nonsense in France the next day.”

“France. Why does that not surprise me?”

“Posh git,” Sherlock muttered.

“Says the fifteen year old wearing Armani.”

“I’ll be sixteen in eleven hours.”

“Says the very nearly sixteen year old wearing Armani.”

Sherlock looked affronted. “This shirt is comfortable.”

“And the trousers?”

The audio went out of sync for a moment, and John saw Sherlock flush and begin speaking before the actual words came through. “The tailor said they make me look slender.”

“So? You _are_ slender. Overpriced clothes have nothing to do with it.”

Sherlock would’t look at the camera. “It was the first time anyone had said it like that, is all.”

“What do you mean?”

“‘Bony’ and ‘scrawny’ I hear relatively often. ‘Slender’ is…complementary. I appreciated the distinction, inane as it may be.”

“Sherlock.”

“I realize it’s stupid. You don’t have to tell me. Now please, let’s talk about what you’ve done to upset your neck. It’s clearly hurting you.”

John touched the back of his head, where there was a sizable bruise trailing down to the collar of his shirt. “How did you—no. Sherlock. Do—since when have you cared if people find you attractive?”

“Not ‘people,’ John.” Sherlock sighed, and John felt like he was missing something.

“Well,” John said awkwardly. “You are.”

“Are what?”

“Attractive.”

“Oh.”

Sherlock considered that for a moment. “Is it the trousers?” he asked curiously and John had to bite the skin of his wrist for a moment to keep from laughing.

“No, Sherlock. It’s just you.”

“Oh,” he said again. “Well.”

John was furiously trying to think of something to say when three men shoved their way into the rec room where he had been, up until that point, alone, talking to Sherlock.

“Watson!” One yelled, giving him a good-natured shove. “Talking to your boyfriend?”

All three took a minute to peer over his shoulder, making various leering expressions at a relatively bemused Sherlock.

“You treat our boy right, you hear, Sherly?” Another man said, ruffling John’s hair.

They moved to the other side of the room to collapse on an assortment of mismatched couches, and John grinned somewhat embarrassedly after them.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“They seem…exuberant.” Sherlock answered.

“One word for them.”

“Are they nice to you?” Sherlock looked genuinely distressed, and the fact that Sherlock was afraid by default that people may be mistreating him made John want to find every idiot who had ever hurt Sherlock and bury them in the ground.

“Yeah, sure. Not bad as friends go. And none of them know about, uh,” he lowered his voice, “my dad. So that’s nice.”

“Friends,” Sherlock repeated.

“Yeah.”

Sherlock leaned closer to the camera, movements lurchy.

“One of them called me ‘Sherly,’” He said, nose wrinkling.

“Err. Sorry. They uh, think your name is a bit poncy.”

“You talk about me?”

“Course I talk about you,” John said, somewhat bewildered. “You’re my best friend.”

Sherlock didn’t say anything, unmoving, and for a moment John thought the connection had frozen.

“Do you think I should try to make more?” Sherlock said finally. “Friends, I mean.”

“I—“ John’s immediate response was a wave of such possessiveness it winded him. “Do you _want_ to make more friends?” he asked.

“No. Not really.” Sherlock settled his chin in the cup of one hand. “One is enough.”

The possessive selfishness was followed by a surge of relief, and John realized, somewhat detachedly, that he was a terrible person.

“I miss you,” he said, probably too loudly because the guys started hooting from across the room.

Sherlock covered his smile with a curled pinky finger.

“I miss you too,” he said.

***

The problem with almost kissing Sherlock in a mad fit of affection is that John suddenly finds himself with his hands around Sherlock’s neck and his mouth inches from his forehead and absolutely no idea what to do next.

He is frozen, brain screaming at him that he better think of something because just standing there is not an acceptable solution to the problem, when Sherlock takes the choice away from him. Sherlock’s shoulders make an odd sort of hitch, and then there are lean arms wrapped tightly around John’s lower back and a head full of curls pushed hard against his collar bone.

_Well_. John thinks. _That went better than expected._

It occurs to him after a moment that this is another sort of situation that cannot gracefully be escaped from, and that they’re going to have to address thing that is between them at some point and he should really be more worried about the whole situation but can’t manage to focus because it feels so damn good to have Sherlock wrapped around him. He hugs exactly like he always has, and exactly like he does everything else: all or nothing, grip so tight it seems if he tried hard enough he could merge them into a single entity out of shear force of will. John lets his hands move, one into Sherlock’s stupid, lovely, hair, the other circling his shoulders, clinging.

“You alright?” He asks.

It doesn’t seem like Sherlock is crying or anything, just breathing against his chest, but much as John as enjoying this, it occurs to him it might not be a mutually happy experience.

“Sherlock, you’re scaring me a bit.”

“Your flat is overpriced,” Sherlock says into the collar of his shirt.

“I—yeah. So?”

“Living alone in London on your salary with student loans is a terrible idea. You may as well be throwing money away.”

John pets one hand distractedly through Sherlock’s hair. “Don’t really have any other choice. I mean, what with the nightmares and all. Who’d want me as a flatmate?”

“I would.”

John’s fingers catch, tighten, and Sherlock lets out a whine.

“Sorry, sorry.” He hastily releases the hair and tries not to imagine Sherlock making that noise under different circumstances.

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” John asks.

Sherlock sighs, loosening his hold. His fingers are still linked behind John’s back, elbows resting on John’s hips, but he’s straightened enough that they can look at each other.

“It’s only logical,” Sherlock says, somehow managing to maintain an expression of boredom. “I have a flat with an extra bedroom. Rent would be cheaper than you pay now and it’s three tube stops from the hospital, which is only one more than your current flat. It’s in a better part of town, Mrs. Hudson is much nicer than your landlord, and the Tesco around the corner would save you an average of 9% in cost compared to the corner market you currently buy your groceries at. Its…the most economically responsible thing to do.”

“That’s why you want me to move in with you?” John says flatly. “Because it’s economically responsible?”

“I—“ Sherlock swallows and the disinterested expression slips. “Not exactly.”

“Why then?”

“You are…important to me. And it would be nice, I think, to live with you.” He flounders a little. “And I have an extra bedroom.”

“Would you want me to use it?” John asks, and then bites down hard on his bottom lip because that was really, _really_ , not what he meant to say.

Sherlock pales, then immediately flushes. “That’s—not if you didn’t want to.”

John lets out a noise that is supposed to be a laugh but comes out closer to a cough.

“Are we declaring ourselves then, is that what’s happening here?”

The door to the bedroom bangs open and Lestrade, looking harried, goes immediately still.

“Oh. Err. Sorry to…interrupt.”

John takes several steps back, Sherlock stands, and they all spend a moment awkwardly looking at each other.

“Um,” Lestrade says, gesturing vaguely into the hall. “Q wants to talk to us. He’s called a war room meeting or something.

“Has he found something?” Sherlock asks.

“No? I think he wants to talk about ways of finding out, uh, things. Could be wrong though. Not like you can get a word in edgewise between him and James.”

“They still arguing?” John asks, moving toward the door.

“I think that’s sort of their default setting,” Lestrade says.

When they get to the kitchen, Sam is still sitting on the counter, sharing a plate of eggs with Victor who is standing beside her. Blessedly, Victor is wearing clothes.

Mycroft, Q, and James are all sat at the table. Q is gesturing angrily at James with a fork.

“Look, it’s simple. Either you take me to MI6 or you take me to my flat.”

“I can’t take you to MI6, you know that,” James says.

“I’m relatively certain they’d make an exception, given the current situation,” he returns.

“An exception to what?” John asks.

Q scowls. “I’m on vacation.”

“And what, you’re not allowed into the building?” John says.

“It’s enforced vacation.”

“Why are you on _enforced_ vacation?”

“I really don’t think that’s relevant at the moment.”

John raises his eyebrows at James. “And you’re… babysitting him? While he’s on _vacation_.”

James takes a vicious bite out of his toast. “Q is a high kidnap risk and most of the bloody security system at MI6 is in his head. Considering he’s no self-defense skills to speak of and M feels implanting a cyanide capsule in a child might be ethically circumspect, it was necessary to have someone watch him.”

“For the last time,” Q says petulantly, “I am an _adult_.”

“So essentially they had to put their pet genius in timeout and assigned an assassin to make sure he didn’t get into trouble,” Sherlock says.

“I’m not an assassin. I’m a secret service agent.” James interrupts at the same moment that Q says, “He was being punished too, you know. It’s not like he volunteered to look after me out of the goodness of his heart.”

“I think we’re all aware of the fact that I’m not here by _choice_ ,” James growls.

Q blinks and goes silent. James studies the expression on Q’s face and then sets down his toast with a softly muttered, _fuck_.

“How long does your ‘vacation’ last?” Sherlock asks.

“Three weeks,” Q answers, somewhat subdued. “I’ve still sixteen days left, but for this they’d let me back.”

“You didn’t even make it a _week_ without getting into trouble?!” Mycroft exclaims, like it’s an affront to him personally.

“I was bored!”

“Still not taking you to MI6.” James says.

“So I’ll take a bloody bus,” Q answers.

“Over my dead body.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Enough!” Sherlock shouts. “The only reason James doesn’t want to take Q in is because he’ll be in even more trouble than he already is.”

“What? Why?” John asks.

“Obvious. Q was injured on James’ watch. He’s supposed to be keeping Q safe and he’s failed rather spectacularly.”

“Oh.” Q looks startled. “But they’ll find out during my next physical anyway. And I doubt I’ll be walking normally in sixteen days regardless.”

James is staring very hard at his plate.

“Look, never mind,” Q says, “No MI6 then, I’d rather go to my flat anyway.”

“What’s at your flat?” Victor asks. “Mycroft got you your laptop.”

Q rolls his eyes and for a moment John is stuck in a memory of Sherlock again, fifteen and driving him absolutely mad with teenage attitude. “Believe it or not, hacking takes a tad bit more effort than opening a black-screened program on any old computer and typing in a few green lines of code. Movies have lied to you. I need more than a laptop and while I’m sure Mycroft has the money, we certainly haven’t the _time_ to recreate my workstation here. So. MI6 or my flat.”

Mycroft pinches the bridge of his nose, then turns to address James. “Is his flat defensible?”

“I mean, it’s not ideal, but it’s certainly not impossible.”

“Fine, go downstairs and speak to Anthea. I’m assuming you can arrange a strategy with the security team?”

“Yes.”

James stands, then touches the knuckles of one hand, nearly apologetic, to Q’s shoulder. “How much time will you need?”

Q shrugs off his hand. “Fourteen, maybe sixteen hours, tops.”

“Okay.”

James leaves the kitchen and the rest of them remain motionless for a moment, listening to him descend the stairs.

“Let me know when there’s a plan,” Sherlock says, and pushes past John into the hall.

“Where are _you_ going?” Mycroft calls after him.

“My mind palace,” he yells.

“His what?” Lestrade says.

“Fantastic,” John mutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two chapters left, now. Thanks so much for reading and I'll see you next week!


	23. Chapter 23

Q’s flat is nothing like John expected it to be.

He was anticipating some sort of dingy third floor walk-up filled with old takeout containers and computer equipment, or maybe a dark, mildewed basement flat papered with posters. But Q’s home is the opposite of what one would expect the living space of a 16 year old emancipated technophile would be. The flat is small, yes, but very clean, modern, and bright. The building is clearly some sort of refurbished industrial space, so the ceilings are high, the windows large, and the layout open.

The far wall is the kitchen area, a range of cabinets and counters bookended by a refrigerator and pantry. There is a window over the sink playing host to several cacti and no mess or dirty dishes to speak of. The opposite wall is fitted with softly lit floor to ceiling bookshelves with an actual rolling ladder, and tucked in the corner is a doorway which John assumes leads to the bathroom. The right wall is a bank of windows, the left painted a soft turquoise color that matches the cabinets. Q’s bed is in the center of the turquoise wall, neatly made in shades of white and grey. Apart from the kitchen appliances, however, there is not a single bit of technology in sight.

James moves past the group in the doorway to turn on the kettle with practiced ease.

“Watch your feet,” he warns, and before John has a chance to ask for clarification, a small sleek bundle of fur has come streaking out from the doorway beside the bookcases and has launched itself at Q’s shoes. The cat climbs up the leg of his trousers until the boy scoops the animal to his chest, at which point the cat turns it’s attention to rubbing it’s dark head frantically against Q’s neck.

“Easy, Boff,” he mutters, looking embarrassed.

“Boff?” Sherlock asks.

“James named her,” Q says defensively. “By the time I got her it was too late, she won’t respond to anything else.”

“ _Boff_?” John repeats.

“Short for ‘boffin’” James calls from the sink. “Little scrap of a thing when I first found her, liked to sleep on Q’s servers. It seemed fitting.”

“James got you cat,” Sherlock says glancing between the two of them. “And named it Boffin.”

Q’s ears go pink.

“Well it’s not like _he_ could keep her. He’s out of country too often. And M wasn’t very pleased with her lurking about HQ.”

Sherlock snorts.

John moves to stand beside Sherlock, purposely elbowing him before he has a chance to say anything else. Sherlock rolls his eyes, but goes silent.

“She’s lovely,” John says, reaching out to scratch beneath the cat’s chin.

“I thought we were here for computers,” Sherlock says, making a slow turn to survey the flat. “And yet…”

“They’re in here.” Q nods toward the door beside the bookcases. “It was supposed to be the bedroom but since it was the only place without windows I thought it best suited for my office.”

John and Sherlock follow Q through the door and into what can only be described as a picture perfect hacker space.

There’s a rack of servers spilling zip-tied cables all over the floor, 3 computer monitors on a U-shaped desk, a larger television screen mounted above them, and boxes upon boxes of unlabeled see-through containers hosting all manner of tech, tools, and hardware, occupying the bookshelves against the wall. An ergonomic chair is listing a bit to the side, as if abandoned mid-roll, and on a long table in front of the bookshelves is a microscope, 3-d printer, and an assortment of firearms in various states of assemblage. There’s another half-open door beside the table and John can see a bathtub in the few inches of space available. There also seems to be some sort of chemistry experiment on the tiled floor. If there was any doubt that Q is a Holmes, it’s certainly assuaged now.

“Well,” John says, making an effort to school his face into something resembling a normal expression. “I’m impressed.”

“I’ll be impressed when he finds us something useful,” Sherlock mutters. His eyebrows are hitched together, jaw clenched in what John is beginning to realize is jealousy.

John smothers a laugh and curls his hand around Sherlock’s bicep, squeezing slightly until Sherlock relaxes. A moment later he realizes what John has done and purposely hitches his shoulders in a show of annoyance. He doesn’t shake off John’s hand though, leaning more into it than anything else, and John grins, letting his hand slide down to rest in the cup of Sherlock’s elbow, where the roll of his pressed shirt sleeve ends. He rubs circles with his thumb against the skin there, watching as Sherlock’s posture goes loose again.

James slips through the doorway and nudges his way past them, purposely pushing John into Sherlock’s side. He gives John what can only be described as a smirk, and then presents Q with a mug.

“Tea,” he says, handing it carefully over.

Q takes a considering sip, nods in approval, then sets both the cup and the cat on his desk, pushing up the sleeves of his cardigan. The cat curls contentedly between two of the monitors, flexing her claws.

James nods toward the door. “Best if we leave him alone,” he says, “Q gets snippy if there’s people about being a distraction. He threw an apple at me last week because I was breathing too loudly.”

“An apple?”

James snorts. “Getting him to eat while coding is tricky. It’s best to just leave food on the desk and hope he eats it automatically when it gets in his way.”

Q mutters something under his breath that is probably offensive before taking another sip of tea, and John wisely follows James back into the main room, dragging Sherlock along when it seems he might protest.

“Tea?” James asks. “Something to eat?”

“Please,” John says.

Sherlock makes a negative noise.

They watch as James moves about the flat with easy familiarity, pouring another two mugs of tea before opening the refrigerator and scraping together a couple of sandwiches.

“Have you been living here?” John asks, accepting the mug that is offered to him.

“For the last week, yes.” James nods to the rug in front of the bookcase and John watches, bemused, as the other man folds himself down onto it, setting the plate onto the floor. “No table,” he explains, “Q usually eats at his desk or in bed.”

John joins him on the floor, glancing at Sherlock who is studying the books in Q’s library with an intensity that is somewhat concerning.

“Been sleeping on the floor as well?” John asks.

James gives him a feral grin. “Yes. There’s a lilo in the bathroom closet. Q makes me pack the bloody thing up every morning and put it away though. Can’t have anything mussing his space.”

John grins. “It is very…clean.”

James expression goes sour, the sides of his mouth pinching as he turns the mug in his hands. “Cleanliness wasn’t a priority in his childhood home. His adamant standards now are understandable once his history is taken into account.”

“Ah.”

John recognizes the expression on James face now. He’s relatively certain he’s worn the same one, countless times, when Sherlock encountered abuse and he wasn’t able to prevent it.

“How long has Q been with MI6?” he asks.

“Officially? Just over a year, ever since his emancipation. Unofficially, closer to three years.”

John whistles through his teeth.

James takes a bite of his sandwich, nodding.

“Back when we first met you,” John says, reaching for the second sandwich, “Sherlock said Q had been recruited. Probably from juvenile detention. Is he right?”

“Course I’m right,” Sherlock mutters from the bookshelf.

James shakes his head. “Not exactly. Or not at first, anyway. I was actually the one to find him. That’s why I’m—”

“Attached?” John supplies.

James lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t disagree.

“Damn,” Sherlock says softly, “there’s always something.”

John nods for James to continue.

“Three years ago, I was new to the Double O program, and before they would send us on real missions we had to complete a year of grunt work first while in training, standard fare, you understand.”

“Right.”

“M, the man who runs the program, he does recruit occasionally: finds promising troubled youth and gets them set on a military path with the potential of future employment. I was sent to the detention center to interview a sixteen year old boy serving eight months for assault. Eric Jones. He’d single-handedly put three grown men in the hospital during a bar fight. Eric had no other marks aside from occasional fights on his record, good grades and, most importantly, was in the foster care system. M thought he had potential.”

“Most importantly?” John repeats.

“MI6 prefers orphans. We’re good at surviving. And we tend to care less.”

“Care less about what?”

“Everything that isn’t surviving.”

“Ah.”

James pauses to take another bite of his sandwich.

“So,” John says, “Eric Jones. Did you recruit him?”

“No. Q was his cellmate. I was understandably distracted from my intended mission.”

John laughs. “And what did this ‘M’ think about Q?”

“Well, he was pretty pissed, actually. Instead of coming back with a profile on a 6’ 2” sixteen year old prize fighter I showed up in his office with a fuzzy cell-phone picture of a skinny, glasses-wearing 12 year old with too much hair and a bad attitude. Once M got a hold of Q’s file though, he changed his mind.”

Sherlock drops onto the rug beside John.

“You took him out of the system,” Sherlock says, taking the half-eaten sandwich out of John’s hand. “Had him put into the care of one of your people.”

“Yes,” James agrees, watching with quiet amusement as John allows Sherlock to commandeer his tea cup as well.

“Q was released early for good behavior upon some gentle prompting, and our current quartermaster received guardianship. Q lived with him for two years before emancipating and officially joining MI6. He was there nearly every day since his release, though, lurking about when he was supposed to be doing school work.”

“School work?”

“Q took his exams at 13. M enrolled him in online university courses but he was more interested in taking down the Department of Defense’s firewalls and exploding things in the lab than doing anything so mundane as university. And he isn’t the sort that would benefit from the military, so M gave up and just offered him a job. He’s being groomed to take over as quartermaster.”

“Should you really be telling us this?” John asks, taking his mostly-eaten sandwich back from Sherlock.

James shrugs. “Probably not. But if something happens to me someone is going to need to look after him. Someone who knows his history and cares about his future. A genius half-brother and a soldier turned doctor fit the bill nicely.”

“Do you anticipate something happening to you?” John asks.

“I’m 24. Most Double O’s don’t make it past 35. Q will long outlive me.”

Sherlock reaches for the sandwich again and John moves his hand out of reach. Sherlock follows it, ducking to take a bite directly from between John’s fingers. There’s a drag of teeth and a brief touch of tongue to John’s fingertips and John goes still, watching Sherlock lick his lips, swallow, and then lean forward to take the last bit of crust as well. He lingers this time, mouth against John’s skin, tongue pressed completely unnecessarily to the pads of his fingers.

When Sherlock finally pulls away, John is feeling relatively light-headed.

“You really are a jealous bastard, aren’t you?” James laughs, nudging Sherlock’s knee with his foot. “You can’t stand his attention being on anyone but you for more than a minute.”

Sherlock rubs the back of his hand across his lips and stands in a fluid movement, tugging the creases out of his shirt. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Course you don’t.”

James grins as John shifts somewhat awkwardly and Sherlock returns to perusing the bookshelves. John retrieves his mug from where Sherlock left it and rubs his thumb along the rim. _If only Sherlock didn’t have such a ridiculous mouth_ , he thinks.

“The similarities between them really are rather disconcerting,” James says, studying Sherlock’s profile. “And I don’t just mean in looks.”

“I noticed the experiment in the bathroom,” John says. “Has he accidentally poisoned himself at any point?” He nods toward Sherlock. “That one has.”

“I told you,” Sherlock mutters, eyes still on the books. “That was _intentional_.”

James hides a smile behind his cup. “Q’s experiments tend to be more explosive than toxic. Usually contained, though he did singe his eyebrows off last year. And there was the pastry incident.”

“Pastry incident?”

“Probably best we don’t talk about it.”

“Right.”

“Does yours sleep?” James asks, and John feels a subtle thrill at the idea of any kind of ownership in regards to Sherlock, metaphorical or otherwise.

“Only under duress. And otherwise due to bribery or illness.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Eating habits?” John asks.

“Abysmal. Q forgets it’s necessary. Though usually if you can get something in his hand he’ll eat it on autopilot.”

John snorts. “Sherlock only eats when someone makes him.”

“Or when he wants attention, apparently,” James says.

“Right,” John agrees, flushing. “That too.”

“At least they both seem to bathe on a regular basis,” James murmurs, smile fading slightly, “Q takes a minimum of one shower a day, still hasn’t gotten over the novelty of it, I suppose.” He blinks twice, then glances at Sherlock. “Yours smells a bit fruity, though.”

“It’s the shampoo,” John agrees. “Vanilla and prickly pear. ”

James laughs outright.

“Posh thing, isn’t he? With the shirts and the tailored trousers.”

“I like his clothes,” John says, quickly, seeing the line of Sherlock’s shoulders go rigid. “They make him look…slender.”

James quirks an eyebrow. “Well the trousers are nice, I’ll give him that. I keep trying to talk Q into visiting my tailor but he insists on cardigans and skinny ties.”

“Better than a normal teenager,” John says. “But then, there’s nothing normal about a Holmes.”

“Part of their appeal, I think,” James says.

John watches Sherlock pull a book from the shelf, hold it open so the biding is at eye-level, and then carefully close it again. He sniffs the ragged page edges of the fore end, then replaces it.

“Definitely part of their appeal,” John agrees.

***

Sherlock Holmes realized he was in love for the first time when he was fourteen years old.

It was a Tuesday.

Actually, it may have been a Wednesday, the revelation came so close to midnight, but regardless, he was fourteen and it was the middle of the night (possibly morning) and he was absolutely furious.

Because he’d never intended to fall in love, yet there he was, loving someone, and it was hateful and all John Watson’s fault.

What caused the revelation was a cold.

John Watson’s cold, to be exact. He hadn’t been there to walk Sherlock home after school and when he didn’t answer his phone either, Sherlock blackmailed Mycroft into driving them to John’s house.

His mother wasn’t home, and his sister answered the door with headphones on and a nasty attitude.

“He’s sick, weirdo,” she said.

Mycroft took this to mean they would be leaving.

Sherlock insisted they stay.

John was bundled into a burrito of blankets on his bed, one arm free to reach for the occasional tissue, miserable and red-nosed and far too warm. He was watching telly on his laptop and managed a lopsided grin when Sherlock entered the room.

“You haven’t been answering your mobile,” Sherlock said, tugging blankets around until he found the object in question.

“Battery is dead,” John said.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and carried it to the desk, plugging the phone into the charger.

“I told you that you’re always to keep it charged. How else was I supposed to know where you were?”

“Sorry,” he snuffled.

“Don’t do it again.”

“ ‘Kay.”

At this point Sherlock was rather lost. He caught Mycroft’s sleeve and pulled his older brother into the hall.

“How do you take care of sick people?” He whispered urgently.

Mycroft raised one eyebrow, delicately extracting his sleeve from Sherlock’s grip.

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps, if we recall what Mrs. Hudson would do for us when we were younger?”

“Warm bath,” Sherlock supplied.

“Elevated water intake and herbal tea.” Mycroft said.

They studied each other for a moment, both thinking.

“Soup,” they agreed at the same time.

Sherlock pushed his way back into the room.

“John!” he said, tugging at the blankets again. “You must go take a bath while I make soup for you. And drink some water.”

“I—what?”

Sherlock managed to un-earth the other boy from beneath his duvet and pulled him to his feet. John swayed for a moment, reaching for another tissue.

“Bath,” Sherlock repeated tugging him into the hall. “With Epsom salts, if you have them. Do you have Epsom salts? I like the lavender ones.”

Judging by the furrow of John’s brow, Sherlock decided there probably weren’t any Epsom salts.

“Well, plain bath is fine too.”

He studied John, now standing in the middle of the bathroom with a vacant expression, and then huffed, moving forward to curl his fingers around the bottom of John’s shirt.

“You really are useless when you’re feverish,” he muttered, peeling off the sweaty fabric.

John, looking somewhat baffled, raised his arms automatically. But when Sherlock reached for the drawstring of his pants, he caught Sherlock’s wrists.

“I’m—you don’t have to. I can do it.”

“Well do it then.”

Sherlock started filling the bathtub with water while John finished undressing, then explored the cabinets for something to add to make the water less boring. There was some good-smelling foot scrub that he figured would work well enough, and he upended half the jar into the tub. Pleased, he ushered John in, thinking that despite the reason for the fever, the flush on John’s face made his eyes look very blue. The contrast was nice.

Sherlock sat on the counter and watched as John settled himself into the water.

“You don’t have to watch me, you know.”

Sherlock frowned. “Are you feeling light-headed at all?”

“No, why?”

“I don’t want you to faint and drown if I leave you alone.”

“I’m not going to drown in the _bathtub_.”

“It’s actually surprisingly common. ”

“Sherlock, _get out_.”

Sherlock went downstairs to find Mycroft frowning at the pantry.

Between the two of them they really should have been able to manage a sick-meal, but when John emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, he found them squabbling loudly over a smoking pan.

“God,” John muttered. “Two of the highest IQs in London and you’ve burned canned soup. Move. I’ll do it.”

So John made his own soup and then Sherlock ordered him back to bed and kept him there, checking his temperature at hourly intervals and monitoring his water intake in a spreadsheet on his phone.

He offered to spend the night, but both John and Mycroft, who had spent most of the evening awkwardly standing in the corner, objected.

It wasn’t until later that night (morning?) that Sherlock realized he had not only sacrificed an entire afternoon to telly-watching, but he had also willingly exposed himself to illness. For John Watson. And the only feasible reason he would do such a thing was love.

Sherlock _hated_ John Watson. Because how _dare_ he. But he also loved him, apparently. It was awful.

Sherlock screamed into his pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left! Thinks got a bit crazy at work today (thus the late-night update) so I only had time to edit this chapter once, instead of the usual twice. Please let me know if you find any errors.
> 
> See you next week for the finale!


	24. Chapter 24

Sherlock was afraid of the dark.

John had noticed nearly straight away in their odd relationship that Sherlock didn’t care for dim enclosed spaces. He didn’t initially think it strange, because Sherlock was just a kid, high as his IQ may be, and kids were afraid of the dark, sometimes. So he didn’t mention it when there was always a lamp left on during their sleepovers, or blinds left open so streetlamps could be seen. By the time Sherlock was fourteen John realized perhaps Sherlock’s distaste was something more than a childish fear, but wasn’t sure how to broach to topic. So he didn’t.

The summer before Sherlock turned fifteen, John spent a week at Sherlock’s house. Sherlock’s parents were both out of country, and Mycroft, who had agreed to watch over the house until their mother returned, had been doing his best to ignore them.

The third night in, there was a thunderstorm.

John particularly liked spending thunderstorms with Sherlock, because Sherlock always became…softer. He would find a window and curl or sprawl in front of or against it, and his whole demeanor would change. The pointed fierceness would leave his expressions, he would be kinder, more tactile, and if John was careful about it, John could usually tuck himself next to Sherlock and read a book or do his homework with rare quiet companionship. He didn’t know what it was about lightning and thunder and the rush of water against glass that made Sherlock so compliant, but he certainly enjoyed it.

On that particular night, John, knowing the forecast, had pulled back all the drapes in Sherlock’s room and propped himself up against the headboard with some pillows. When the rain started, Sherlock, who had been composing in the other room, appeared and thrust himself onto the bed. He curled toward the window, head butting against John’s ribs until John shifted the book he was reading and Sherlock could drape himself more comfortably across John’s stomach.

John rolled his eyes and braced the book against Sherlock’s shoulder blades. Sherlock sighed, pleased, and settled into silence.

Three hours later John had finished the book and Sherlock was asleep. John carefully extracted himself from the bed and made his way downstairs to the kitchen in the hope of finding a snack. It was rare that Sherlock was asleep and _he_ was awake, so he was rather lost as to what to do to occupy himself.

When he got downstairs, however, the light in the kitchen was already on.

Mycroft, in pajamas and a dressing grown, was standing by the sink, hip cocked to the counter, a quarter-full glass of whisky in his hand. The bottle was at the front of the open cabinet a few feet away.

“Oh,” John said, pausing awkwardly in the door. “Hello.”

Mycroft turned away from the window to look at him and John felt…sad. It was often difficult to remember that Mycroft was only in his twenties and not some far removed “adult” of the world. The suits and the power and the money and the careful way he did everything from speak to walk to answer the phone, were just as much an act as Sherlock’s wide-eyed feigned surprise when something of John’s went missing or turned up broken. Mycroft had been raised in the same dysfunctional environment as Sherlock, and doubtless was just as isolated. But Mycroft didn’t have any friends. Sherlock had John. Mycroft, John was beginning to realize, had no one.

“Couldn’t sleep?” John asked, moving to lean against the island.

“No.” Mycroft said, returning his attention to the window.

The storm had lightened to a soft pattering of rain on glass, a soothing rush occasionally interspersed with far-off rumbles of thunder.

“Sherlock has this… _thing_ about storms.” Mycroft said, apropos of nothing.

“I—what?”

John was surprised enough to find Mycroft drinking. The fact that he initiated conversation, and used such a common word as “thing,” was downright concerning.

“A thing?” John repeated. “What do you mean?”

“He _likes_ it,” Mycroft said, gesturing toward the window this his scotch. “The idea of it, I guess. When he was small every time it would rain he would go outside and stand in it, just—enthralled, I guess. Every time. Which, I suppose everything is magical when you’re a child, but even after he had science to explain them, storms never lost their enchantment for him.”

John grinned at the thought. “Well. At least he’s not out in it today.”

Mycroft didn’t smile. “When Sherlock was eight our father decided his obsession was too childish and locked him in the wine cellar for a three days as punishment after Sherlock left during the middle of a dinner party to play outside in a storm.”

 John straitens, his throat gone suddenly tight. “What?”

“Wine cellar is Father’s go-to punishment,” Mycroft says, more to himself than John. “It’s underground, no way of turning on the lights from the inside so you’re stuck there in the dark. There’s a sink, so we could get water, but nothing else, beside the wine, and we knew better than to mess with that anyway. He’d let us out twice a day to go to the bathroom and eat something but that was almost worse than being stuck inside.”

John swallowed. “Why?”

“After being in the dark so long,light hurts. And then, just as you’re starting to get acclimated to the brightness, you’d be put back into the dark again.”

“That’s… psychological torture.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “It’s effective.”

“It’s abuse,” John hissed.

Mycroft swirled the dregs of whiskey in his glass, ice cubes clicking. He shrugged before draining it.“What could we do? Our mother certainly won’t stand up to him and the only person who would was our nanny, but she was fired shortly after Sherlock entered primary school. I tried once. It didn’t end well.”

“What about now?” John asked. “Does your father still do that? Punish Sherlock by—“

“No. Not since Sherlock’s was ten or eleven. I think at this point he’s frightened enough by the combined forces of Sherlock’s intellect and mine that he won’t do anything quite so vitriolic. Besides, he’s hardly home a month out of the year with all the traveling he’s doing, now. He’d need to be _around_ to enforce punishments.”

They both went silent and Mycroft moved to refill his glass.

“So that’s why Sherlock is afraid of the dark,” John realized.

“Yes.”

John watched as Mycroft took a sip, then rested the glass against his temple.

“What about you?” John asked

“What _about_ me?

“You’re not afraid of the dark.”

Mycroft laughed without humor. “I have other issues.”

***

Q’s flat, picturesque as it is, becomes relatively boring after the fifth hour spent in it. James brings Q water and tea and pain pills at hourly intervals but mostly they do nothing. After the sixth hour, John is getting quite hungry and Sherlock is beginning to drive him mad. After seven hours, they take turns sneaking into Q’s office to use the restroom. When James finishes in the bathroom he steals the cat on his way out. She keeps them occupied until the eighth hour. By the ninth, James has called for take-out, cleared the delivery boy with the security team surrounding the building, and is making plates for everyone in the kitchen.

John knows James is a licensed killer, but the man is strangely domestic in Q’s home. James is careful to clean up any messes he makes in the transferring of food, wiping down the counters and tucking empty boxes into the trashcan under the sink. He pauses when getting out drinks glasses to fill a cup and water the cacti in the window.

John smiles to himself and pets the cat in his lap. Sherlock steals her a moment later, murmuring something about ‘testing reflexes’ and John has to go save poor Boffin from the clutches of a bored genius. He demands Sherlock sit down and eat something and is surprised when Sherlock acquiesces. James can be heard around the corner quietly cajoling Q into take a moment to eat and John wonders what it is about skinny, clever, dark-haired, Holmses that turn military men into mother hens.

Sherlock accepts the fork John hands him, blue eyes wide, expression thoughtful, as he listens to the conversation in the other room.

“Thank you, John,” he says quietly, shifting so their knees are touching.

John grins at the plate in his lap and presses into the contact.

“No problem.”

Q calls for James at hour eleven and emerges, wincing with pain, but wearing a pleased expression. James helps him to the rug and Q hands his most recently emptied tea mug to James, who carries it to the kitchen and starts the kettle for the umpteenth time.

“I found them,” Q says, folding himself into a cross-legged sitting position. “Or at least I narrowed it down to two places. They could both be at either, or each be at one, but there’s no way of knowing for sure unless we go. I’m assuming Moran is with Moriarty, though. No one else he would trust at this point, I think.”

Q holds out his hand and Boffin, who had been sprawled in Sherlock’s lap, lazily batting at his fingers, slips across the floor to climb Q’s arm and drape herself around his neck.

“Who is ‘them?’” John asks.

“Moriarty and Moran,” Sherlock says, before Q can answer. “Where are the locations?”

“Paris and Madrid. I’d wager Moriarty is in Madrid, though.”

“Why’s that?” James asks from the kitchen.

“Hospital,” Sherlock says, then glances at Q for confirmation.

Q is grinning at him. “Yes. The IP I traced to Madrid came from a wireless network two blocks from the largest hospital.”

“So what now?” John asks.

Q glances at James, then straightens his shoulders. “I contacted HQ. I’ve been reinstated full access and they want the two of us to come in and be outfitted at 0800 tomorrow. They’re going to let me run the mission on location.”

The mug in James hand is set rather violently onto the counter.

“What?” he says, at the same time that Sherlock exclaims, “Moriarty is _mine_.”

Q ignores Sherlock. “Moriarty, aka Richard Brooke, would be a high profile apprehension alone. With Moran, a supposedly dead agent, they are a priority capture. M wants them, badly, and I convinced M the best way to go about making that happen is if I’m on site.”

“Like hell you’re going to be,” James says, stalking toward the rug. “You are _not_ an operative, and even if you were you’re not fit for—“

“I cleared it with M,” Q interrupts. “And he is your superior.”

“Then apparently I’m going to need to have a talk with M and _remind_ him of some things.”

“Moriarty is _mine_ ,” Sherlock repeats, louder this time.

“You’re coming with us, Sherlock” Q says, placating. “I had you hired as a consultant.”

“A consultant?” Sherlock hisses. “It’s _my_ case!”

“James and I are better equipped to handle this than you are.”

“ _You_ aren’t equipped _at all_ ,” James exclaims.

“I’m coming too,” John says.

“ _John_ ,” James starts, exasperated.

“No,” Sherlock interrupts. “You’re still injured, John.”

“Fuck that.” John curls one hand around Sherlock’s wrist, thumb to his pulse, waiting until Sherlock is looking at him to continue. “Anywhere you go,” he says, voice firm. “I’m coming too, is that understood?”

Sherlock swallows as James lets out an aggrieved noise.

“John is coming too,” Sherlock says.

***

They arrive back at Mycroft’s house just past 10pm.

Mrs. Hudson is asleep. Sam and Victor are playing videogames loudly in the living room. Lestrade and Mycroft are in kitchen drinking scotch.

Q sets the cat carrier down on the kitchen floor, daring Mycroft to say anything as he opens the wire door.

Boffin takes a tentative step out, considers her surroundings with interest, then leaps onto the table to examine the tumblers making condensation rings on the wood.

“I hope you’ve brought a litter box as well or the maid is going to be quite cross.” Mycroft murmurs, extending a hand for the cat to rub against.

“I have. James is setting it up in our room. I was hoping she could stay here with you while we’re gone.”

“Of course,” Mycroft murmurs, the beginnings of what might actually be a smile tugging at his mouth. He drags his hand down the cat’s spine, looking pleased when she starts to purr. “Where is it you’ll be going? And will you be needing assistance?”

John sighs as Q begins to explain what he’s found.

“I’m going to bed,” he tells the room at large, and retreats to Sherlock’s room.

After a quick shower and change into t-shirt and pants, John starts to turn down the bed, but is interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he says, using the towel around his neck to dry his hair.

He’s expecting Lestrade, or possibly even Mycroft, but is surprised to find Victor standing awkwardly in the doorway.

He’s holding two mugs and looking very uncomfortable.

“Made this for you,” he says, extending one of them. “Actually I didn’t. Sam did. And it’s awful herbal stuff because Sam won’t let us have caffeine after 10pm. But. Uh. Here.”

John takes the cup.

“Well. Thanks. I guess.”

They continue to stand, several feet separating them, without saying anything.

“Was there something you needed?” John asks finally.

“I was special,” Victor says, and winces, clearing his throat. “I mean. Everyone who’s worked with Sherlock—even Sam and Lestrade who consider themselves his friends—everyone knows he doesn’t connect with people. Doesn’t let anyone in. And he did. With me. When we were in New York. Which, it was out of necessity and proximity more than any actual affection for me, but it lasted, afterward. And it was nice. To be special, to him.”

Victor shrugs, looking somewhat defeated. “I liked it. That I was only one he’d smile for occasionally. That I was the only one he wasn’t intentionally cruel to. I mean, he treated Mrs. Hudson and Sam similarly, but it was different, with them, and when you showed up…I was jealous. Am. Jealous. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though.”

He swallows, seems to brace himself, and then says quickly. “I apologize.”

John’s eyebrows have traveled a good portion of the way up his forehead by the time Victor goes silent.

“I—thank you, for apologizing. I appreciate that.”

Victor nods stiffly. “You’re going with him, right? To Madrid?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

It’s silent for a solid thirty seconds before John shifts, uncomfortable, and Victor takes a step back toward the hall.

“Well. I just wanted to say—that. So. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

The door has nearly closed when Victor pushes it open again. He doesn’t speak anything for several seconds, frowning at John in a way that keeps John silent, waiting for Victor to formulate whatever it is he wants to say.

“When we were in New York we were working a human trafficking case,” he says finally. “But there was a mole in our operation and Sherlock and I were taken hostage. It took eight days for my superiors to secure our release.”

John isn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Sherlock hadn’t been in a situation like that before and he wasn’t handling it well. The torture didn’t seem to bother him so much as the fact that they would leave us alone in the dark for hours afterward. By the second day he was pretty deep in his own head and starting to panic so I got him talking. Asked him questions about positive things. Happy memories, you know? To distract him.”

Victor rubs one hand on the inside of his forearm, as if remembering an injury.

“He talked about you. For six days straight. I probably know more about you than I do about my own family.”

“Me?” John says. “He talked about _me_?”

“Yes,” Victor says. “You. Every happy memory he has past the age of twelve has you in it.”

John’s throat goes tight.

There’s footsteps down the hall, and before John can respond, Sherlock is in the doorway, looking with concern between John’s bitten lip and Victors serious expression.

“Victor,” Sherlock says sharply.

“No, its fine,” John interrupts, “He was actually just apologizing, about before.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Victor agrees, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “And now I’m going to bed. Goodnight John, Sherlock.”

“Goodnight,” Sherlock says, eyebrows furrowed as Victor eases past him and out of sight.

John sets the mug he’s still holding onto the nightstand.

“Can you come help me with the bed?” he asks, knowing his voice is all wrong.

Sherlock moves to assist in pulling back the duvet, studying John with annoyance and something that may be worry.

“Is everything alright?” he asks, watching as John arranges pillows with the express purpose of not looking at him.

“Yes.”

“Lie,” Sherlock says, and John glances up on instinct.

Sherlock’s fingers are curled together, expression nervous, but hopeful, and John has to smile. Or at least attempt to smile. That’s when he realizes that there’s a chain sitting just at the line of Sherlock’s collar.

John moves forward before he can think of reasons not to, pulls the necklace out from beneath Sherlock’s shirt, holds the disk with John’s name and the faded remains of a phone number in his palm.

Sherlock swallows and John watches the skin of his throat flex with the movement.

“I had Mycroft pick it up for me today,” Sherlock says, voice low. “I’m sorry I haven’t been wearing it. I know I promised.”

Neither of them says anything for several seconds and Sherlock’s face is so earnest, so far removed from what it was that first day in the hospital, so close to what it had been six years before that John feels physically winded.

“I love you,” John says, because timing has never been his forte and it’s true and he may as well admit it.

Sherlock goes completely and utterly still.

“What?”

“I love you,” he repeats. “Have. Loved you. For a while, I think.”

Sherlock backs away and the necklace slips between John’s fingers. “No.”

“What?”

“No. You can’t. I would have noticed.”

“Sherlock, have you not been paying attention for the last _decade?_ Either I’m a glutton for punishment or I’m completely mad for you.”

“You _can’t_ ,” Sherlock says, nearly pleading.

“I can. Do… Am. And I don’t know if you’re even interested in that sort of thing, I know you used to say relationships were messy and pedestrian, and even if you _are_ interested you might not be in _me_ , but I though—well. You should know. So. There we are.”

“Are you _completely mental_?” Sherlock says, stalking back into John’s space. “ _I thought you were heterosexual_.”

“I did too,” John mutters, “apparently I was wrong.”

Sherlock ignores him.

“I have been _pining_ for you since I was _fourteen years old_. Of course I’m interested in—that. With you.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I—pining? Really?”

“Shut up.”

John feels like he should kiss Sherlock. Now. But the logistics of it are something he hadn’t considered. What he’d like to do is just grab a handful of Sherlock’s stupid hair and pull him down to his level, but Sherlock is looking skittish enough, he doesn’t want to scare him away. It’s as he’s considering this that Sherlock takes a step back, eyes slipping from John’s to some point over his shoulder.

Shit.

“What’s wrong?” John asks.

“I don’t know how. To be in an ordinary relationship. I’ve never even tried. I’m going to ruin it. I—“

“Sherlock, it’s fine. No relationship between the two of us ever had the hope of being ordinary anyway.”

Sherlock is still backing away, though.

“Why can’t I just be normal?” he says, more to himself than John. “ _I wish I were_ _normal_.”

“I don’t.” John says fiercely.

And he does kiss Sherlock then. Because he isn’t really sure what else to do.

One moment Sherlock is talking, and then he’s talking against John’s mouth, and then there isn’t any talking at all anymore.

They end up pressed against the door, Sherlock’s head ducked, held in place by John’s hand knotted in his hair. Sherlock’s palms are moving restlessly from John’s collarbone to hips, pausing at different muscle groups, fingers lingering over the scar tissue at his shoulder, and John realizes he has absolutely no idea what to do next, but more of this would be rather nice.

He makes an effort to gentle the kiss, nips at Sherlock’s bottom lip when he doesn’t seem inclined to follow his lead. Sherlock jumps, then grins. Bites back. Their breathing slows, movements less urgentas John releases Sherlock’s hair, lets his hands move down his neck, to trace his shoulder blades, sharp, like aborted wings beneath the soft fabric of his t-shirt.

“So,” John says, making a bit of space between them. “Do we understand each other, then?”

“I—yes.” Sherlock’s hair is positively a riot, his mouth pink, a bit of stubble burn on his jawline, and John finds the whole look really, really appealing.

He presses another kiss to the lips in question simply because he can now.

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Part 1 is done! If there's something you think is missing or incorrect, please let me know! Sherlock and John will be a large influence in Part 2, and their personal storyline will continue, but it won't be from their points of view anymore. I'm already toying with the idea of making this an ongoing series, though. I've all sorts of thoughts for how their relationship develops and progresses from this point on, so there may very well be a Part 3. 
> 
> I'm going to start posting a completed Teen Wolf Derek/Stiles fic shortly (a birthday gift for a friend) and will hopefully be back and posting chapters for Part 2 of Jealous Gods by the holidays.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and an especially huge thanks for those of you who commented. You have no idea how far that goes to brighten my day.
> 
> If you'd like to stay updated on what/when I'm posting you can find me on tumblr at http://xiaq.tumblr.com/  
> See you around!

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is always appreciated! You can find me on Tumblr at http://xiaq.tumblr.com.
> 
> This fic is in the process of being translated into Italian! You can find that version here: http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3322213


End file.
